How to shoot and capture White Lilies in B/W pics?

[alfred_alfred]

I need to show the tones and texture of the Lily flowers in B/W pls help.

 

Studio with flash. But how should i do it?

[frank uhlig]

The lilies are as white as snow, yes. So search for snow pics here for advice: if you will do

that your will learn to overexpose by 1-2 stops. Of course the background will turn rather

dark then, but so it is with our contrast limited medium. Good luck!

 

If you were to take pics of "black walnuts", you would underexpose by 1-2 stops to get them

truly black. Otherwise either pic would turn out to be middle gray where you want clear white

or black and that is what you want to avoid.

[eric_brody]

Shoot them with a gun or capture them with a trap. Sorry, I could not resist.

 

Eric

[15sunrises]

Frank, I'm wondering if you meant underexpose? Confused question from a newbie over here!

[phyrpowr]

dave t

 

Frank's right, for the reason he cited: the camera's light meter is set for a standard of "18% gray", which is supposedly 1/2 black, 1/2 white. When shown a white wall, it tells the camera "this is 18% gray, adjust", ditto a black wall. So the camera, if on auto exposure, darkens the white wall down to gray, lightens the black one. Therefore, you have to, sort of counter intuitively, lighten up, or overexpose a light area, darken a dark one, to achieve th4 same tone that it appears to your eyes

 

"White with detail" , a snow field, white clouds, and a lily petal, usually call for OVER exposing about 1 1/2-2 stops

[dzaebst]

Frank's right about the lily being properly exposed by overexposing the meter reading/using +1 or +2 stops flash compensation, but he's wrong about the background necessarily being darker...the background should come out whatever color it is within a half stop or so, depending on whether you use 1 or 2 stops of overexposure. It may be a bit dark because of the flash illuminating the flower, and the light falloff to the background, but not because of meter or flash compensation. One can correct this by using a second flash to illuminate the background, if one does not want a dark background. Myself, I would use +2 stops compensation as a starting point, then bracket, using a second flash or other means (reflector) to get the background to the tonal quality I wanted.

[15sunrises]

Thanks for the explanation!

[phyrpowr]

Pay much more attention to Dennis than to me, as I totally zoned out on the "studio flash" part, and am totally flash challenged. General principles remain the same, any meter wants to make something mid-gray, work from there

 

Also, I didn't highlight "camera" in my post, but someone/thing did, and it pulls up some sort of Gwen Stefani video. Cool!

[bob_bill]

Dennis, I like the idea of the second flash on the background and would also consider a colored gel on that flash if shooting in color and converting to B&W. He might prefer the color shot when done. Velvia lives! As for the background darkness, a white flower against a black background might really pop. Here's a daffodill shot at daffodil hill, CA today back lit to get the flower's bell to glow (nuke'em til they glow) and black velvet behind flower and flash for clean, high contrast background.<div></div>