Not so good. I was trying for soft and white.

[JBW]

[Geoff F]

Is that natural daylight, Brian? A tricky scene to photograph even if you were in total control of the lighting. Maybe some exposure bracketing and careful merging would produce a more uniform result. Or possibly, as I frequently do, a merge of two or more conversions from the same Raw file.

Your composition is fine (apart from some stray object on the left side leaf).

Botanical subjects are so tricky, aren't they.

[Shadowman]

Looks both soft and white.

[Rufus]

I agree with John that it looks both soft and white.

The petals have detail, texture and shape, and are not blown out. I just wonder whether the vase and the softness of the green areas were what you had in mind when you pressed the shutter.

David

[Cogito]

Well, you achieved soft....A little more "white" is quite easy to achieve....

[Manfred M]

Agreed Brian - the image has a decidedly yellow / red colour cast. Add blue and cyan to get the colour closer to white.

Softness is related to the size of the light source, relative to the subject. What light did you use and how close was it to the flower. To get a soft light you need to have a very diffuse light source that is at least as large as the flower just out of frame.

[JBW]

Is that natural daylight, Brian? A tricky scene to photograph even if you were in total control of the lighting. Maybe some exposure bracketing and careful merging would produce a more uniform result. Or possibly, as I frequently do, a merge of two or more conversions from the same Raw file.

Your composition is fine (apart from some stray object on the left side leaf).

Botanical subjects are so tricky, aren't they.

They are indeed.The stray part is the last of the anthers. I didn't have the heart to pluck it off. It was a studio shot with one incandescent light bouncing off a wall. Until I order a tethering kit from Tether Tools (Birthday in September) I'm seriously restricted by the 12" tethering cable that came with the camera.

[JBW]

Looks both soft and white.

Yesterday I did the pp with my old backup glasses. M"Lady got my new ones fixed yesterday and it does look better.

[JBW]

I agree with John that it looks both soft and white.

The petals have detail, texture and shape, and are not blown out. I just wonder whether the vase and the softness of the green areas were what you had in mind when you pressed the shutter.

David

The vase not so much the the green area is close.

[JBW]

Well, you achieved soft....A little more "white" is quite easy to achieve....

I'll be working on this shot today.

[JBW]

Agreed Brian - the image has a decidedly yellow / red colour cast. Add blue and cyan to get the colour closer to white.

Softness is related to the size of the light source, relative to the subject. What light did you use and how close was it to the flower. To get a soft light you need to have a very diffuse light source that is at least as large as the flower just out of frame.

a LED 10 watt 3000 k bounced off a wall about 2 feet from the flower. That setup got rid of all the bright spots.

Tethering Tool starter kit in September plus a small table will allow for more options.

[Manfred M]

a LED 10 watt 3000 k bounced off a wall about 2 feet from the flower. That setup got rid of all the bright spots.

That would give you nice, soft, directional light.

[JBW]

That would give you nice, soft, directional light.

well at least I got something right

[JBW]

Same shot with exceptionally different pp. Biggest change was to move the master color balance into the blue / cyan range

[FootLoose]

This looks much better, Brian.

[JBW]

This looks much better, Brian.

Manfred and I disagree as often as we agree. But he knows his color wheel. When he suggested more blue and cyan I wasn't going to ignore the suggestion. The white just exploded.

[DanK]

a LED 10 watt 3000 k

That's the answer. White balance was off. 3000K is considerably warmer than daylight. It is the approximate white balance of a halogen bulb.

When shooting flowers under lighting of this sort, I always include one shot with a neutral card. I use this one. I then use that one shot to get an approximate adjustment of white balance to apply to the other photographs. I sometimes adjust to taste, often going a bit warmer, but this removes the guesswork and makes the process extremely fast.

I normally use halogen, which makes this simple. In the case of LEDs, it can be harder, as many LEDs have unwanted spikes in their spectral distributions. This may require more adjustment. To get reasonably accurate color from LEDs, you need to pay attention to two numbers. One is the CRI, which is usually available. The other is the R9 index, which is harder to get but is important because some reds are not counted in the CRI. You can find bulbs with CRI > 95 and R9 > 90, and a few with R9 > 95. However, these are relatively uncommon bulbs, tend to be more expensive, and are also less efficient (only an issue if you use lots of them to light your house). That's one of the reasons why I have put off switching my flower photography to LEDs. I haven't yet taken the time to find the right bulbs.

[Geoff F]

Normal quality 'household' bulbs can vary considerably in their colour output depending on the type.

A few years ago when we still used the 'old fashioned' traditional 100 watt bulbs I would get quite a few moths coming to a window overlooking my garden, with a light placed close to the glass. Then I went to those energy saving 20 watt bulbs which were supposed to be 100 watt equivalent and the moth count dropped by half. Also, I didn't like the light colour or the way they took time to reach full output. So I have now switched to LED bulbs which are 100 watt equivalent. I prefer the colour of their light but it is rare to see any moths at that window now.

However, I then built myself a moth trap using a 20 watt actinic bulb and at this time of the year I regularly get 50 moths from 30 or more species in just a couple of hours.

[DanK]

Normal quality 'household' bulbs can vary considerably in their colour output depending on the type.

A few years ago when we still used the 'old fashioned' traditional 100 watt bulbs I would get quite a few moths coming to a window overlooking my garden, with a light placed close to the glass. Then I went to those energy saving 20 watt bulbs which were supposed to be 100 watt equivalent and the moth count dropped by half. Also, I didn't like the light colour or the way they took time to reach full output. So I have now switched to LED bulbs which are 100 watt equivalent. I prefer the colour of their light but it is rare to see any moths at that window now.

However, I then built myself a moth trap using a 20 watt actinic bulb and at this time of the year I regularly get 50 moths from 30 or more species in just a couple of hours.

Very interesting. I wonder what frequencies they are attracted to. It would seem somewhere in the blue range. In the old days, stores sold very yellow incandescent "bug bulbs" that were supposed to attract fewer bugs, which would fit.

Household LEDs vary on many dimensions. Most now have a nominal color temperature--most often, 2700, 3000, or 5000K. But even two bulbs with the same nominal color temperature can look quite different because of spikes and troughs in their spectral distributions. Some time ago, I purchases some 3000K PAR 30 LEDs for my kitchen from a supposedly good manufacturer. They seemed to me to have a pronounced magenta cast, and I vaguely recollected reading that some LEDs have spikes in the magenta range. So, I set a camera to a fixed 3000K, took photos of one of those bulbs and a halogen (generally around 3000K), and processed them with WB as shot. The difference was striking. I sent this to the manufacturer, and a customer service representative finally agreed that their bulbs manufactured after a certain date had that problem.

For household use, I find I can often get by with mediocre bulbs. e.g., when I replaced all of my 40W incandescents, I couldn't find any bulbs of that rightness with CRIs much above 80, but the ones I bought are OK. For photography, however, it's another matter.

[Manfred M]

Brian - white in an image is usually light gray, not pure white. This means that the R, G and B values need to be reasonably close together.

What I will do is to drop a colour sampler on a spot that should be very close to white, but not blown out and get a reading. In the flower. The image shows what this looks like in Capture One:




Here I get a reading of R= 243, G = 234 and B = 217. The last value of 234 is the luminance value of the spot.

White the area is supposed to be light gray, the middle value is 234, which means that to be neutral the Red value needs to be reduced (by adding Cyan) and the Blue value needs to be raised (which reduces the Yellow). This is how I know that those adjustments will correct the colour cast in the flower. As the flower us unlikely to be pure white, getting the values closer together will correct the colour cast.