Chuck wrote
> The second one works better because it doesn't have the light colored
> vertical line running through the background. If it was mine I'd clone
> out the line and go with #1.
>
> Chuck Norcutt
>
> Brian Swale wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > Top two links
> > http://www.brianswale.com/zuikoholics/
> > Enjoy, if you're that way inclined.
To tell you the truth, I scarcely noticed the line. These are two shots from a
set of about 10.
The set-up was laughable. That flower is quite large; about 18 - 20 cm across
at the front; the plant in a plant-pot. How was I to capture it the best way?
Currently, I'm living most of the time in a rather small flat. My daughter has
bought a LARGE electric treadmill to exercise her dogs on (long story) and is
storing it in my flat ('nother long story) where I have placed it just inside
the
front door. It is sitting folded with the black running belt nearly vertical.
In plan
dimensions the whole device takes up about 70 x 100 cm of my floorspace;
160cm high. And heavy. The whole machine is made of black plastic, but it is
a trifle reflective. However, it is big enough to provide a backdrop for even
this
flower.
So I pulled the machine forward so that it was slightly in the light of the
open
doorway, and turned it to the left so that no (or very little) direct light hit
the flat
running surface which is 40 cm wide. Then positioned the flower in front of the
running surface in the diffuse light from the doorway (it was a morning with
much low cloud), and took the exposure from the flower. Hand-held, IS on,
with the E-510. I think one at least is at f/16. I was somewhat in
contortionist
mode to get a good angle. Just one significant light-source; cloud through the
open doorway.
I did well to exclude so much :-) That's my story anyway.
The flower petals actually are (were) pretty white, but I found that if I let
the
camera yield that colour, the details got blown right out.
If you don't know that then it doesn't really matter what colour it is. This is
"my"
interpretation !! And much of the interest is in the texture details of the
petals.
The only changes I made to those two images for web purposes were to
resize in Faststone Image Viewer, sharpen (about 3 or 4) and save at about
90%. With so much of the image as black, the file size wasn't huge; they are
800 x 1067, 159 - 169 kb; that's all. Down from about 6MB original.
The vertical line is part of the structure of the treadmill which caught the
open-
doorway light ... ... I managed to exclude all the remainder of the structure
!!
All done within 20 minutes.
If you save them & open and play with gamma in Faststone on them, I feel
sure you could bring up all sorts of unwanted detail from the background. But
all to no point.
Brian Swale.
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