Been running more tests on my scanner to find the sweet spot. Learned about making shims from business cards from a very wise photographer. Wish these flowers were in peak bloom. Still like the photo.
Nikon F5, Nikor 105 mm. AF f/2.8, SB 25 flash on reduced power and tripod. Not sure of the exposure. Did not always keep exp. information in 1998.
Ken thanks for the curves tip for whites recently...
Epson Expression 4990 Photo Scanner
PS/CS4
Neat Image
FocalBlade
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Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL
Last edited by Charles Wesley; 03-11-2010 at 01:03 PM.
The flowers look great! The green in the BG is barely visible and this is a distraction to me. I would be interested to see what it would look like if more of the leaves were visible but since this is a scan, they probably aren't retrievable. Maybe removing them completely would help.
For the fun of it, open it up in Photoshop and in curves, click the black eyedropper on the green in the BG.
Thanks for the critiques. I got the BG result from a classic flash fall off while shooting outdoors. Will try the curves eye dropper technique tonight or tomorrow and post. My fear is I will have pretty flowers floating in a sea of black. As I recall, the camellia bush was in deep shade. My flash was angled to produce some shadow effect to give a 3 D effect...
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Charlie Wesley
St Augustine Beach, FL
Charlie, I love the colors and soft feel to the image. The green in the LRC is just bright enough that my eye wants to keep going there to see if there is something there. I'm not sure if brightening it or darkening it would work better. Very nice image..... Have you been to the Alligator Farm? How are the birds? Congrats!!
Thanks for the comments. I hear you & Ken about the green in the LR BG. I wish it was brighter also. Slide film is not very forgiving. It has a dynamic range of only about 5 stops maximum. The shadows go dark quickly.
I live two miles from AF. One can see all kinds of wading birds there. We have the First Coast Birding & Nature Festival here in April. Ten of the biggest names in nature photography will be coming to teach. AF will have about 600 photographers on the board walk at one time. Millions of dollars of photo equipment will be on display. Wish I was a digital camera/ lens sales person these days...
Like the shot Charles. The green is also a bit distracting for me, but i get what u mean by floating flowers, and that could be worst, than distracting stalks. Nice colors and detail.
Nice composition and nice soft feel. I know some may comment that 2 flowers may compete for the eyes attention but I think in this case they are close enough that they compliment each other. Agree with you and others about the leaves. Certainly acceptable as presented.
You're most welcome. If you ever come to shoot at AF let me know. I can shoot with you if you like.
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Charlie Wesley
St Augustine Beach, FL
A lovely image, Charlie. I like the two flowers and their position in the frame but they feel almost too soft for my taste. I'm wishing for just a little more DOF in those petals for some reason.
I do like the green in the LRC but I can see why others find it distracting. Too bad you can't bring the other blacker areas up to that level - it would really give a nice sense of environment and probably help with your "floating" feeling that the flowers are producing. Still a lovely image. I can almost smell them!
I went into curves to try to brighten the green stems more. Ken, I was unable to use the eye dropper tool. Just adjusted the green area in curves. Not sure if it's an improvement only different. Hope someone could let me know...
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Charlie Wesley
St Augustine Beach, FL
I like the green stems more now Charlie but the flower color now looks off a bit. Might tweak that curves adjustment just a little to bring that hard purple around the petals back again.
Spring Camellias
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