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Summer Lily taken from Dad's back garden just after a down pour last Friday afternoon. Any comments are much appreciated.
| Brand: | Canon |
| Camera: | Canon EOS 550D |
| Recording media: | JPEG (digital) |
| Date Taken: | 6 Jul 2012 - 5:58 PM |
| Focal Length: | 55mm |
| Aperture: | f/29.0 |
| Shutter Speed: | 1/100sec |
| Exposure Comp: | 0.0 |
| ISO: | 6400 |
| Exposure Mode: | Aperture-priority AE |
| Metering Mode: | Multi-segment |
| Flash: | Off, Did not fire |
| Title: | Summer Lily |
| Username: | 
gjfereday |
| Uploaded: | 10 Jul 2012 - 9:06 AM |
| Tags: | Flowers & plants |
| VS Mode Rating |
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| Votes: | Voting Disabled |
 | Critique Wanted |
| Modifications Welcome (Upload a Modification) |
Comments
We all have an opportunity to photograph flowers with droplets nowadays, Graham, and your droplets look good with highlights on them.
I like the way you have gone in close to capture the centre of the lily, and have also filled the frame with the petals so that there is no background showing.
Compositionally, I would like to see the stamens more offset in the frame, less central, and have cropped to achieve this in my modification.
It is unfortunate that the stamens are not more of a contrasting colour to the petals, then they would stand out better. It looks like you wanted everything in focus, but this type of shot can work better with a wider aperture/lower f-number, which would have given you more light, and you wouldn't have needed such a high ISO setting. The wider aperture would give you a shallower depth of field, separating the stamens from the petals by blurring the petals. Of course, the choice is yours. Another option would be to use flash, which gives a sparkle to water droplets like this.
I adjusted Levels in my modification and selectively sharpened the stamens.
Pamela.
Thanks Pamela. I actually took several shots, some showing the whole lily as well as close up. I used both my 18-55mm and my 55-250mm lenses but this one came out best. I like the mod and the stamens look really sharp and stand out more. I did a slight mod in Elements to get rid of a little greenery inbetween two of th petals and sharpened it but not to your extent. Not sure how you sharpen the stamens seperately, perhaps you could advise.
Thanks for your feedback.
Graham
Hi, Graham.
I use PaintshopPro which has a very useful section of brush options which include saturation, desaturation, dodge, burn, soften, sharpen, etc. and all of these can be used on small separate parts of an image. The alternative, of course, is to use the selection tool and the sharpen option, but that takes a little more time and patience.
You say that you "did a slight mod in Elements to get rid of a little greenery inbetween two of the petals" and this is fine. Sometimes a close crop still shows some background, and I have been known to clone some more petal detail into those areas
.
Pamela.
Hi Graham,
A couple of comments on your shot settings. I understand that you deliberately selected F/29, which thereafter caused you to up the ISO to get a decent shutter speed and exposure.
However, there is a negative to this approach when using a non macro lens, (and I mean a real, dedicated, single focal length macro) and in particular, a kit lens. Your lens will start to LOSE sharpness below f/11 or so, and thats seen here. Take a look at this link for more information:
http://photo.tutsplus.com/articles/theory/when-sharp-isnt-sharp-diffraction-and-...
So next time, you will be armed with some useful knowledge!
One more point, - the two colours you have here, red and yellow, and the most difficult colours to work with in digital photography, and are often very much over saturated, so you need to be careful of this, and even consider de saturating these colurs, which will actually IMPROVE detail.
More ammo for your toolkit,
regards
Willie
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