Late Spring Collection

[Donald]

Wendy

'Thinking in Black & White' is not the title, but one of the key concepts that Freeman talks about. The details of the book are here (this is the UK site and I think the book may have a slightly different title and publisher in North America).

[ScoutR]

Wendy,

I think things could have been improved at the shooting stage. That background board is rather dull looking. Perhaps if it had a separate light on it to illuminate it a bit more it might look better. This subject might have worked better on black.

I know things could have been improved at the shooting stage (embarrassed smilie) I'm working on it. These were all outside. I tried to get some light reflected from the front but there was not much to work with. I was in the shade. If I start bringing flowers indoors, I will try to set it up so the back has better lighting.
This may have worked better on black, but I really like tone on tone, so that's what I'm practising.

As for the composition - there are eight main flower heads (apart from the central area of buds), but none of them seem to me to be wholly in focus. You could have used f/16 instead of f/8. I know that normally you may have parts of a flower OOF, but the fact that you have eight in partial focus makes it hard to visually fix on a particular spot. If that makes sense.

Yes, The focus point is on the buds in the middle. I thought f8 would give me more DOF. There is not really that much depth front or back from the buds. I'm thinking camera shake or wind was the culprit. If not then DOF will be my next training exercise. (Frown)

You clipped the petal at point (B). I would have tried to get the whole thing in, or done a more definite crop.

I know, and I should have, but this is the only crop I liked of what I had. I'm always cutting off a petal here or there, I'm used to it. It's the least of my worries right now, because I know how to fix it.

The flower head at point (A) is quite OOF and is directly behind another flower, which spoils the look of that flower. I would have cut the back-ground flower and stem off completely - if you use a small DIY knife it does it quite cleanly so you cant see anything. The other alternative would be to just select one flower-head and shoot that, but you would probably need a macro for that.

Unfortunately it's not my garden. The owners kindly allow me to stop and take photos. I'm sure they are inside laughing their butts off as I chase after backgrounds and reflectors flying in the wind and crawl around trying to decide on a camera angle. I don't mind providing comic relief, but I don't want it turning into high drama.

Thanks for letting me edit it. Sorry, I couldn't do any better.

You gave it your best shot, thanks for trying. I'm sorry I didn't give you something better to work with.
Thanks for all the feedback. When I figure out the technical stuff I can see I have to pay much more attention to detail. Xplains why your flower shots are so nice.

[Colin Southern]

OK, If I used Matrix metering on the shot below, I would expect to have to increase EC because most of the shot is lighter than medium grey. (remember the background is actually white) probably not by the full 2 stops, but what i would do is to increase till I got blinkies and then go down 1/3 from there. Yes, No?
On the other hand if I had the same shot with a black background, 3/4 or more of the shot would be darker than medium grey and I would have to decrease EC by close to but not quite 2 stops. Yes, No, Close????

Wendy

Hi Wendy,

Good theory But in practice what you wrote will more likely (mostly) only apply to spot metering - reason being that matrix / evaluative metering has a few more smarts, and will give weight to the darker areas as well. I have to be a little vague at this stage because the actual algorithm that manufacturers use is proprietary and even a Canon 1Ds3 with 63 metering zones will meter a scene differently from say a 40D with only 35 zones.

The compensation when using evaluative / matrix modes mostly comes in when the scene has highly dominant lighting levels eg a polar bear on a snow field or a black cat on a black rug - but I think you get the idea. From an exposure point of view, the shot above doesn't look too bad - just a bit under-exposed.

Something else for you to consider -- an Expodisk would allow you to nail both exposure and white balance at the one time - as would an incident lightmeter.

[Colin Southern]

Ahaaa! This is what I am trying to do. I need to learn to see middle grey though, and then figure out zones from there as to what is lighter or darker and by how much and how many stops it equates to.

Yes / No / Maybe ... if you just buy a gray card you can then set your manual metering off it and "job done" - no figuring out of anything required after that

[Donald]

I should have added that I use a WhiBal card for setting white balance. Even though I shoot B & W, I always use the WhiBal and then work from there in PP. This, again, was based on advice given by Colin a long, long time ago (he must be really old by now)!

[ScoutR]

Thank you everyone, just wanted to let you all know that I have read all the posts that were added this afternoon. Appreciate the feedback, and will now try to let it sink in.

Wendy

[Colin Southern]

This, again, was based on advice given by Colin a long, long time ago (he must be really old by now)!

They say that you're only as old as you feel - I feel 175 some days!