Help with Flower power

[ClaudioG]

Hi there all. One type of photography ive struggled with is flowers.

What is the general consensus when taking images of flowers? Should all of it be in focus? How close do you get...is it too close? Theres so many ways to take an image of it and i just want to be put on the right path. I always use a macro lens for this.

Heres one image while am at it. C and C welcome and Advice on Flower Photography appreciated.

[Stagecoach]

Hi there all. One type of photography ive struggled with is flowers.

What is the general consensus when taking images of flowers? Should all of it be in focus? How close do you get...is it too close? Theres so many ways to take an image of it and i just want to be put on the right path. I always use a macro lens for this.

Heres one image while am at it. C and C welcome and Advice on Flower Photography appreciated.

The answers easy Claudio, and you have accomplished it well in your ladybird image, good framing and interesting.

My personal preference with flower shots is that all should not be in focus and it should be something I would hang on my wall. Your one here does not work for me as there is too little in focus and it's too centrally positioned.

[DanK]

think the first image is a successful image of a ladybird, but not of a flower. Blurring the flower makes the ladybird stand out. I agree with Grahame that the second one doesn't have enough in focus.

However, there is no consensus about how to shoot flowers, just as there is no consensus about how to shoot landscapes. I do a lot of flowers. If you look at my website, you will see that my taste is similar to Grahame's: I want to see detail, and I keep the entire image in focus, often stacking more than 20 images to accomplish that. However, I have seen beautiful flower shots by other people that have a fairly narrow depth of field.

Similarly, there is no consensus about how close to get. We had a discussion of this in another thread here recently. In my own work, I am simply trying to achieve an interesting and attractive image that is different from what one would see walking by. Magnification is just a tool for doing that. If you look at mine, you will see that they vary a great deal in terms of how close I get. I would guess (it's just a guess) that the magnification ratios range from about 1:3 to 2:1. At the far end, they really aren't macros. Sometimes, a single flower can be used for multiple images across a wide range of magnification.

So, my suggestion is that you google "flower photography" (or, if you are security-conscious like me, search with DuckDuckGo) and click on "images." Not everything there will be high-quality, of course, but you will see a wide range of approaches. You can also find some with much narrower depth of field than mine here. Decide what appeals to you.

[Manfred M]

I would agree with both Grahame and Dan that the first image with the ladybug is the stronger of the two. I personally find that there is a bit too much "negative space" in your composition and that a tighter crop from the left would be worth considering,

As for the second image, I would have to say that that one is not as strong as the first one for a variety of reasons. The lack of overall sharpness, as the others have pointed out, is a key issue. The second issue is that gray mass near the centre - it does not work tonally and almost looks like you tried to burn down a bright area, but the whole area went gray and not the normal. tones I would expect to see there; the edge needs some softening (feathering). The final main issue that I see is the extremes in brightness; a bit of calming through dodging and burning would be worth considering.

[xpatUSA]

My caveat is that there should be no over-saturation in the flower details. Not one pixel should have an RGB channel value of zero, otherwise that is a false color. Some out-of-camera images are already over-saturated and could actually benefit from a reduction in saturation!

In this post, I mean "Saturation" as revealed by the 'S' in an 'HSV' or 'HSB' color-picker.

[Geoff F]

My chief suggestion about flower photography, Claudio, is to avoid harsh sunlight. Over exposure/saturation and hard shadows spoil so many flower shots. When I can't pick a suitable lightly overcast day I often create a little bit of light shading on the subject and always remember that the background also requires to be within the shaded area. Even simply using my body as a sunshade can sometimes be sufficient. Fill flash can be useful at times.

Remember to always look at the background as well as the subject. Often a little bit of 'gardening' to clean up potential background disasters will make all the difference between a quick snap and a well thought out scene.

Do you include parts of the stem and leaves? They are often essential for proving the identity of a plant but usually require careful focus stacking.

If just showing part of a flower in your image get the closest area in sharp focus. It doesn't matter if the distant parts gradually fade into softness as long as the closer edges are focused. Multi flowered plants can be a challenge and sometimes flower heads will need to be trimmed to make a more balanced composition.

Unless doing specific focus stacking or close macro work I often find that a reasonably close focusing general purpose lens gives me better results on a whole flower/plant than a genuine macro lens which has a very shallow focus depth.

[DanK]

Unless doing specific focus stacking or close macro work I often find that a reasonably close focusing general purpose lens gives me better results on a whole flower/plant than a genuine macro lens which has a very shallow focus depth.

I don't understand this. DOF is a function of focusing distance and aperture, so it should be the same if you are framing the flower the same, regardless of whether you are using a macro lens. Can you explain?

One thing that does vary among lenses and that can matter a lot for macros done in the field is background blur. This is different from DOF. Its the rate at which out of focus material blurs as you move back from the area of focus, and it is a function of angle of view, hence focal length.

This effect can be quite apparent if you take a photo of a flower in situ with lenses of different focal lengths, particularly if the background is closer than one might want.

[DanK]

The "very shallow" depth of field occurs because a genuine macro lens (assuming that means 1:1 or more) allows focusing at a closer distance.

For example the closest focus distance for the Sigma Macro 105mm f/2.8 EX DG is 31.3mm but that for the Sigma 105mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art is 100mm.

I think this is a classic case of internet miscommunication.

Of course I understand that focusing closer reduces DOF. After all, I do a lot of macro. But that's not how I interpreted what Geoff wrote:

Unless doing specific focus stacking or close macro work I often find that a reasonably close focusing general purpose lens gives me better results on a whole flower/plant than a genuine macro lens which has a very shallow focus depth.

I interpreted that as meaning: 'If I am going to do a whole flower--hence at a distance that allows putting the whole flower into the frame--I get better results with a general purpose lens.' That's what I don't understand. Given an identical distance, DOF is approximately the same.

I actually get better results with my macro lens than with my general purpose lenses, but not for reasons of DOF: it's a very sharp prime lens, whereas all most of my general purpose lenses are zooms, and two of them are markedly inferior to the macro lens in optical quality.

[xpatUSA]

I think this is a classic case of internet miscommunication.

Post withdrawn.

[Geoff F]

I haven't done the actual measurements but if I photograph a flower, for example, with my Sigma 180 macro lens I get a very shallow focus depth. However, if I use my Tamron 24-70 lens there is a much greater range of in focus depth. Distance from subject to camera would be significantly different between those lenses, assuming I want to shoot a whole flower.

[xpatUSA]

I haven't done the actual measurements but if I photograph a flower, for example, with my Sigma 180 macro lens I get a very shallow focus depth. However, if I use my Tamron 24-70 lens there is a much greater range of in focus depth. Distance from subject to camera would be significantly different between those lenses, assuming I want to shoot a whole flower.

Something not right here, Geoff. My spreadsheet tells me that the DOF does not vary for different marked focal lengths when the distance is adjusted for equal framing (object size in the image plane remains the same). I tried it for 24, 70, and 180mm focal lengths all at f/8 and an image plane size of 10mm.

I have two spreadsheets ... One for distance, the other for magnification. They both say the same thing - no change in DOF.

[DanK]

I haven't done the actual measurements but if I photograph a flower, for example, with my Sigma 180 macro lens I get a very shallow focus depth. However, if I use my Tamron 24-70 lens there is a much greater range of in focus depth. Distance from subject to camera would be significantly different between those lenses, assuming I want to shoot a whole flower.

This sounds to me like conflating background blur with DOF. Background blur, unlike DOF, is a function of angle of view, hence of focal length. It has nothing to do with the fact that one of the lenses has been designed to focus more closely than you have. Imagine that you are looking progressively farther behind the flower. Once you leave the area of perceived sharpness (DOF), blur increases more with longer focal lengths. So if you have areas a little outside of DOF, they will seem blurrier with longer focal lengths. That's easily confused with DOF.

Even at the long end of your zoom lens, the difference in FL between the lenses you are comparing is very large, many times as as large as is needed to see this effect clearly. It's one reason why some macro photographers prefer a long lens like yours to the shorter lens I use (100mm).

There used to be a great explanation of this on the web that paired a technical explanation with photos that illustrated it well. unfortunately, the owner took it down. I gave some thought to trying to replicate it but never got around to it.

Lesser background blur, which your shorter lens will give you, will add to the perception of having more in focus, so your advice makes sense to me. however, it's a function of focal length, not of whether a lens is a macro lens that can focus closer than you have.

[xpatUSA]

Background blur, unlike DOF, is a function of angle of view, hence of focal length. Once you leave the area of perceived sharpness (DOF), blur increases more with longer focal lengths.

however, it's a function of focal length, not of whether a lens is a macro lens that can focus closer than you have.

For what it's worth, I was looking at blur circles lately. Turned out that blur diameter in the image plane is:

A*m*(D-s)/D

Where A=aperture diameter, m=magnification, D=background distance and s=focusing distance.

Of course, A = F/N where F=marked focal length and N=f-number.

I think Merklinger's "The INs and OUTs of FOCUS" can be helpful in these matters:

http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/TIAOOFe.pdf
.

[ClaudioG]

Thank you all for the advice. Will take it all into account and hopefully in few days have some up with some improvement