Back Lit Flowers - How to improve these shots

[Mike Buckley]

Oh yes, the wind. Maybe that is another guideline to follow - when the wind is blowing, do not even attempt backlit flower photography. Much better to be patient and wait for a day the wind is not blowing.

An alternative guideline to follow is to take the shot, knowing that by the time the good light returns and the wind dies down, the flower may be dead. Though wind makes it more difficult to make a great shot, it doesn't prevent that from happening.

[Brownbear]

Thanks Mike, I will give it a whirl.

Attend to the right side of the histogram using the Levels tool, the Curve tool or both.

[SilverYeou]

Hi Lu,

And I have tons to learn and I truly appreciate that you would take the time to provide me with some feedback. Thank you.

Are you saying that I should try shining a flashlight with a white colour on a flower to achieve backlighting? Yes, I like Urban's tip very much, too.

Yep, if possible. There are some cool flashlights that give control over the intensity of light and focus. I have not tried that myself yet, but surely I will. I heard it works wonders ^^

[Brownbear]

Attend to the right side of the histogram using the Levels tool, the Curve tool or both.

Here is the tulip with the dynamic range increased using the LR curves tool, basically I pulled the line over to the right in each of the separate channels



And here it is again using something I found on the topic on the internet. I used LR and did the following (plus darkened the background) These seemed like very odd things to do to a photo, and something I would never do but it seemed to work. I also applied a mild S curve to RGB..



Highlights - 100
Whites - 70
Shadows +70
Blacks +60
Exp -1.2
Contrast +50%



The details in tulip seems to stand out more in both.

Is this what you meant by increasing the dynamic range? Does it work?

[Inkanyezi]

Is this what you meant by increasing the dynamic range? Does it work?

I hope I didn't mention anything about increasing dynamic range in this thread. I'm going to be a bit of word-cop here, banning erroneous usage of terms, even if I am not quite clear myself at all times.

What you want to do is not increase the dynamic range, but when working with tools as highlight/shadows, only the opposite is possible, to decrease the dynamic range. Decreasing dynamic range implies increasing contrast, as a smaller dynamic range of the subject can be stretched over the dynamic range of your presentation medium, the computer screen. In the curves tool, it is seen as a steeper curve, and parts of the actual dynamic range of the sensor can be cut away at both ends of the histogram. Moving the white point left and the black point right does this.

The best so far, in my eyes, is the upper one in the referenced post. Maybe it's just a tad overdone, but it has more snap than any of the other. As the white point probably had to be moved a bit left, it could have had more exposure from the beginning, suppressing some of the noise that is evident. When shooting still objects digitally, there are mostly advantages by using low ISO and a reasonably long shutter time, exposing "to the right", in order to both get the best possible dynamic range and as little noise as possible.

There are many tricks for finding correct exposure, the simplest often are using what's built into the camera. One way is just shooting at what the meter tells you and look at the highlight blinkies and maybe the histogram. If there is blink, you could allow it in just a few pixels in the specular highlights where petals are curled in close to the top. When you see only a hint of blink somewhere in that specular highlight, the exposure is correct. Using RAW and LR for conversion, you should be able to get very good contrast and colour over the flower, and you may darken the background to your taste by moving the black point or pulling down the curve to a longer "toe".

[Brownbear]

Hi Urban,
No you did not make any reference to increasing the dynamic range... My sincere apologies for any confusion.

My last post was simply an editing exercise for me to learn how to edit, see Mike's mention of dynamic range and the result was the 1st referenced flower. I've may have mixed up the terms and likely got it wrong but it was simply a learning tool.

Thank you for the extra information. Very informative and helpful. I will try to checking out the petal tips and exposing to the right next time around. For me this exercise was all about trying to learn to get a black background so the flower stood out by itself, so I will learn to do both.

[Mike Buckley]

Urban,

Your excellent wordsmithing (which, ironically, is not recognized as a word by Firefox) is duly noted.

I am the one who suggested to Christina that she try "selecting the flower and increasing the dynamic range to include brighter tones." I had considered suggesting that she "map the tones to make the brights brighter." Knowing that she is fairly new to this stuff, I decided against that because I felt that she probably would not be familiar with the concept of mapping tones, though in reality that is what is happening.

Even so, when the darkest tones of an image remain unaltered and the brightest tones are altered to become brighter, I think it's fair to say without being misleading that the dynamic range of the altered image is greater than the unaltered image. That is proven by the fact that the histogram of the altered image displays data across a larger amount of the X-axis. Right? Wrong?

[Inkanyezi]

Mike, I'm trying hard, but it still hampers me, that my mother tongue, my most living language, is not English, and often I try to translate concepts that are differently worded in my home tongue, Swedish. As if that were not enough, for many years now, the only language, almost, spoken in my home, has been Spanish.

So forging the words is a game that has many facets, and I don't have a genuine "feel" for what is correct or best understandable in English, and I ask that all bear with me when I make errors, which is inevitable.

To the question of dynamic range; I think of it differently. Say you have in total about ten stops of light levels possible to store on your chip, and only eight are actually captured, leaving the two rightmost ones flat, a histogram that covers not the whole scale, but ends two stops before the right end. The image thus does not display a clear white highlight where there's a specular reflection, but a shade of grey, a very light shade, but still not pure white.

What you then do, in PP, is to draw the white point (in levels, the right diamond) to the left, until you touch the end of the histogram with the vertical bar that appears when you draw the diamond. That will brighten the highlights, and at the same time make the curve a bit steeper, because now there are two stops missing from the ten you could capture, only eight remaining, thus a smaller dynamic range, from ten to eight. We have stretched the eight stops to cover the entire range of the presentation, making each one of them wider. Contrast in the image is increased, the curve is steeper, but the dynamic range we display from the scene is smaller. The data is spread over a larger part of the X axis, when two stops with no data was removed from it. The dynamic range that the image displays, when we look at it, thus is larger, as previously, it had maybe effectively four and a half stops of brightness, lacking the brightest possible ones, and now when it is changed it has all six, showing the highlights as bright as the medium permits.

When I use the term "dynamic range", it is the dynamic range of the scene, the brightness levels within the subject, and the range that can be captured. Of course the display medium also has a dynamic range, much smaller, and we always had the struggle to fit our scene, the subject, into this latter very much smaller dynamic range. That's where we invent tricks as tone mapping, in order to fit into a purse what really would need a suitcase.

[Mike Buckley]

Your English is terrific, Urban, as is your ability to explain complex concepts.

I'm quoting the following from your post mostly for Christina, as your two sentences shown below hopefully help make the concepts clear in her mind.

The dynamic range that the image displays, when we look at it, thus is larger, as previously, it had maybe effectively four and a half stops of brightness, lacking the brightest possible ones, and now when it is changed it has all six, showing the highlights as bright as the medium permits...When I use the term "dynamic range", it is the dynamic range of the scene, the brightness levels within the subject, and the range that can be captured.

As for me, I was using the term, "dynamic range," to be the the range displayed by the image. It's now clear to me that you and I seem to be on the same page.

In summary, there is the dynamic range of the physical scene, the dynamic range of the image of that scene, and the dynamic range of the camera's sensor or film. This discussion with you has made me aware that I'm not always sure which dynamic range a person is referring to in a given situation.

[DanK]

If you want the best control over lighting for flower shots, the best option, IMHO, is to shoot them indoors in a controlled environment. Not an option, of course, if you are in a public garden, but I do most of mine either with cuttings from our own garden or with purchased flowers. This gives you not only control over lighting, but also freedom from wind, which allows you to easily stack images for greater depth of field.

I'll post a picture of the setup in my study. the flower in this case is help by a Wimberly plamp, but I often just pile stuff on the table (hence the trumpet, toner box, and stat manual piled up) and put a vase on top. the lights are "hair lights"--inexpensive boom lights. I use halogen floods. The diffuser is from a Manfrotto diffuser pack, but I now usually use piece of baking parchment paper. The $14 umbrella provides for diffused lighting. When I want backlighting, I just move a light behind the flower.

I'll post the final image from that setup below it. It is focus-stacked using Zerene for more DOF, but that is irrelevant to the lighting question.

[Mike Buckley]

Dan,

Are you using hot lights or compact fluorescent lights? I ask because I wonder about the adverse affect of the heat from the hot lights on the fresh quality of the flower.

[DanK]

Dan,

Are you using hot lights or compact fluorescent lights? I ask because I wonder about the adverse affect of the heat from the hot lights on the fresh quality of the flower.

Neither. I use standard 50W and 75W halogen floods. They don't get that hot. this of course requires slow shutter speeds, but that is not much of a problem. I use mirror lockup and a remote release to avoid camera shake. The only problem is that if you have a wood floor (I do in that room), you have to let everything settle down and then not move during the exposure.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Dan. Good to know for the future. Right now the only equipment I have is my camera but one day, when I'm ready I intend to try to use indoor lighting and props, and all that stuff I will save this reply... Gorgeous flower!

If you want the best control over lighting for flower shots, the best option, IMHO, is to shoot them indoors in a controlled environment. Not an option, of course, if you are in a public garden, but I do most of mine either with cuttings from our own garden or with purchased flowers. This gives you not only control over lighting, but also freedom from wind, which allows you to easily stack images for greater depth of field.

I'll post a picture of the setup in my study. the flower in this case is help by a Wimberly plamp, but I often just pile stuff on the table (hence the trumpet, toner box, and stat manual piled up) and put a vase on top. the lights are "hair lights"--inexpensive boom lights. I use halogen floods. The diffuser is from a Manfrotto diffuser pack, but I now usually use piece of baking parchment paper. The $14 umbrella provides for diffused lighting. When I want backlighting, I just move a light behind the flower.

I'll post the final image from that setup below it. It is focus-stacked using Zerene for more DOF, but that is irrelevant to the lighting question.

[AB26]

If you want the best control over lighting for flower shots, the best option, IMHO, is to shoot them indoors in a controlled environment. Not an option, of course, if you are in a public garden, but I do most of mine either with cuttings from our own garden or with purchased flowers.

Dan, I still battle with that thing called conscience. Shooting in a studio, to me, is still limited to commercial work and portraiture. Picking a flower to shoot it under controlled lighting, is almost like me driving 20Km form my home to a Lion park and shoot “canned” lions in an enclosure and call it a wildlife shooting experience. If I were to do a Lion shoot I would like to drive 600 Km to the Kgalagadi Reserve and capture lions in their raw natural environment.

Maybe some day I will overcome some of my bad habits and get that shot, no matter what.

[DanK]

Andre,

It all depends on what you are after, I suppose. I want full control over detail in macro work, which means I have to stack, and that in turn means that natural environments are difficult. Also, I want control over backgrounds. Sometimes, the natural background works, but other times it doesn't (for me, anyway). E.g., here is one I did indoors, although with a live plant, where I wanted a featureless black background (provided by a fleece vest on the floor):



Dan