Trouble taking photos of red/pink flowers

I am sure it is within the settings, but I can't figure out what to do. I

really have a hard time taking photos of bright red/pink flowers outside. The

colors seem to bleed together leaving no details. Any help/advice is appreciated.

Since you don't mention what camera you are using, am I to assume by default that you are using a 4x5 field camera with Velvia 50 sheet film?

Patty - I posted a similar thread on "Deep red roses" on 11 June and got many answers which you may find illuminating. Suffice it to say I am still working through them.

With very saturated colors on some flowers can render them very difficult to capture with a small gamut sensor. i.e., nearly impossible to capture with JPEG as not blowing the red channel will underexpose the green and blue channels.

 

One such species is rose campion, Lychnis coronaria. I find to get accurate color on it I must shoot RAW and then underexpose the shot in the RAW converter and then brighten the shadows into midtones in Photoshop (this essentially compresses the highlights rather than clipping them). This is the only way to get this species to look real on my monitor.

 

Using negative film would ameliorate the problem most of the time. Slide film (not super saturated) would be better than JPEG and worse than RAW in most instances.

 

some thoughts,

 

Sean

My solution was to take several shots at one f-stop intervals from under- to overexposed (EOS 20D), then Merge to HDR in Photoshop. I think it helped, but you know.....I'm still not sure I like the shot!<div></div>

Patty, it's mostly in the lighting, and somewhat with the subject, and somewhat with the technique used to record the photo. Try lots of different kinds of lighting until you get the look you want.

 

Example--try before sunrise with no direct sunlight on the flower. Then try just after sunrise with direct sunlight on the flower. Then try with a diffuser, a reflector, overcast day, etc.

 

If that doesn't work, then try a different subject with all kinds of different lighting. Compare notes.

 

If that doesn't work, then maybe it's your equipment.

 

Eventually you should be able to find the look you like. My guess is it's the lighting...

Patty, I shoot KM, illuminate with flash, meter incident. No problems.

 

What do you shoot, and how?

Patty, I've looked at your images, see that you shoot a digital Canon about which I am very, very ignorant and use available darkness. So far, so good.

 

All four of the images you had up when I looked seemed pretty fuzzy, but (BIG BUT) so do most of the small digitized images posted all over the web. I don't know what aperture you're shooting at, whether you're shooting hand-held or from tripod, whether you're using a lens that peforms well at the magnifications you're getting on chip, ...

 

In short, I have more questions for you than answers. Y'r problem doesn't seem to me to have a lot to do with colors in general or red in particular. If you want help, help us help you. Don't be shy, tell us more about what you do.

Thanks for the replies. I've been out all day and am just catching up on things. I will admit that I am a novice and some of the terms I am trying to learn and understand, so please forgive my ignorance. I use a Canon Digital Rebel XT. Just bought it a little over a month ago. I used a G6 before that.

 

I have taken pics that have been used in the training DVD's that we make and they came out great. But since I have now been handed the job of taking all the pics for everything, I know I need to learn a lot more and that is why I came here.

 

Anyway, when I take pics I just generally snap away and use auto-focus. However, recently I have been messing with the manual focus and that seems to work better. I have used a tripod a few times and was actually thinking about taking it out back tonight and messing with it.

 

I will check that one thread out and see what I can find and understand in it and it very well maybe just the lighting as others expressed. You either get the colors that bleed together or overexposed leaving it looking washed out. In time I will master this, I really want to because I enjoy it a lot. I didn't really start getting into it until last year, now it's almost a daily thing for me...and the best part is, everyone leaves me alone while I go out! :)

 

Here is a link to the camera description for the person that was not familiar with it. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=371194&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

 

Again thanks! I will take any help and/or advice you are willing to swing my way. :)

Based on your gallery, it looks like you're shooting digitally. Saturated reds are difficult for a digital camera--for two reasons. First, a bright, saturated red flower when exposed normally will often max out the red color channel, while registering very low values on the other two channels. Since the channel that is predominant is completely maxed out, you won't see much detail. Second, the standard sensor in a digital camera uses a Bayer array in which only one out of every four pixels is red. Ordinarily, the de-mosaicing algorithm can get sufficient information from all three channels so that all the pixels in the final image have meaningful information in all channels. But if you have an image that is basically only shades of red, then the only pixels that are providing information are the red ones--your 8 megapixel camera in effect just became a 2 megapixel camera with much lower resolution.

 

Usually, there is some good detail information hiding in other channels even with a very saturated red flower--you just have to look for it and then apply one of several techniques to recover it. As already mentioned, a RAW image will often provide the best result. However, a quick and easy Photoshop method for many images (including those taken as jpegs) is to convert to RAW mode and create a Curves adjustment layer. Steepen the curve for the Lightness channel greatly in the region occupied by the flower--you should see detail in the blossom without a change in hue (that is the advantage of LAB), although parts of the image will likely be much darker. Fill the layer mask with black and then use a soft edged brush at about 50 percent opacity to paint into the layer mask in the region of the blossom until you have just enough detail to make it look realistic. You can then reconvert to RGB if you like

That made complete sense to me, which surprises me. :) Thanks John. Photoshop does come in handy and I will try taking photos of the one flower that is giving me a hard time tomorrow in the RAW format.

Patty, when I looked at your reply I saw I had made a small but important typo in my posting--it should have read "convert to LAB" not convert to RAW. Anyway, I'm glad it made sense. Good luck.

 

John

I'm not familiar with your camera model, but if you're saving to

jpeg using automatic settings see if you can save to AdobeRGB

within the camera.

 

The red channel in your first of four pics is clipped so that detail

is unrecoverable if the camera writes to sRGB by default. If you

capture in AdobeRGB you have some edit wiggle room if you

gauge your exposures using the camera's histogram. I hope it

has a histogram.

 

In AdobeRGB the red channel in your red flower would normaly

be around 240 if the image looks reasonably exposed in the

preview and as indicated in the histogram, in sRGB, the camera

would write it to 255 to get the same preview.

Thanks, I'll try that as well. I recall seeing a setting like that. I need to wait for some new blooms to try these things. :)

By the way William, that is a pretty photo. My apologies for not saying so earlier. What type of flower is it?