Flowers

Anouilh

Expensive macro lenses are not always an option.

I bought a 4+ diopter filter last year and enjoyed using it a lot.

Remembering, a year on, how I managed
to make magnified photos without a
true macro lens.

Diopter 4+ is a little gem.

http://shortsights.blogspot.com/2009/01/faux-macro.html#links

I've also placed objects under a magnifying glass and photographed through that fairly successfully.

Anouilh

I found this Italian site by chance. It works as an aggregator for all Flicr photos and presents the images "on black".

Just replace the number of the photo in the bar with the one you want to see:

http://www.33cl.it/photos/photo/2850963695

This may raise issues of copyright with some people?

Flowers often look much more dazzling against a dark background.

Anouilh

elven wrote: »

I use the canon 100mm f2.8, usually wide open.

Tripods ftl. I lose my mojo if i'm stuck with one.

You must have a very steady hand.

I find a tripod is very useful with butterflies on flowers because they have a slight tremor that prevents the image being totally sharp. Then the fluttering parts that are recorded seem alive.

There is a lot of talk about tagging and aggregators at the moment and I thought to share this tip again:
By choosing unusual tags for one's photos, they are more easily found by search engines, for example

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anouilh/tags/%CE%BB%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%BB%CE%BF%CF%8D%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%B1/

elven

I have the very opposite of a steady hand... thats' why i can't go below 1/200th. Life sucks.

Anouilh

Perhaps all the Flickr members might like to make some links here to their flower photos.

I found this brilliant essay on insect photography this morning:

http://photo.net/photo/nature/butterfly.html

It links up very nicely with flowers.

stick-dan

Anouilh wrote: »

I love B&W flower photography.

How about selective colouring flower photography?
I like to make them stand out. Guess we all have our tastes.

oshead

I don't usually take photos of flowers even though I'm around them a lot of the time while shooting Insect Macros. After seeing this post I searched Lightroom for some of my images tagged as Flowers. Heres what I found. Most are extreme macros but some closeups too. I've uploaded them to my boards gallery.

I think I will pay more attention to shooting them this summer.

Click the image to go to the gallery.
[URL="https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/95233/70902.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Dave OS

Anouilh

That is really impressive, stick-dan.

Have you a secret formula for the colour contrasts with B&W?

Your lovely galleries remind me of how easy it is to upload photos and arrange them properly for easy viewing in Boards.ie.

I've been thinking about how film still gives some of the best results for flower photography:

http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j295/kiwirant/Anouilh/?action=view&current=RosaBallerina.jpg

I've listened to professional photographers, now retired, lamenting the lack of sharpness and subtlety that they find in much digital work.

stick-dan

Anouilh wrote: »

That is really impressive, stick-dan.

Have you a secret formula for the colour contrasts with B&W?

Thanks

No I don't have a secret formula. I just know when i take the picture. Don't ask me how I do i just do. The only thing i will say is that too much colour contrasting can get boring and make your work seem one dimensional and make you seem like you're a one trick pony. I've refrained from doing it at the moment just for a short while.It's so easy to fall into the trap of just picking out the main object in the photo and leaving it in colour and then b/w-ing the Background.

That's my story anywho.

Anouilh

Thank you.

stick-dan

Anouilh wrote: »

Thank you.
<--PIC-->

That looks really good. Well done.

stick-dan

@anouilh

use the cone flower one on the site from your signature, i had a look i think the pale pink in the flower against a b/w background would look really well, be interested to see the results.

Anouilh

Thanks again.
I'll do that.

MartMax

Anouilh, don't be afraid to crop. Sharp photo always help. And sometimes less is more.

Anouilh

What a beautiful photo.

You're right about cropping. I do it from time to time for my own use. I don't upload most of my photos to the Internet, but will find some nice crops to share in future.

The detail in your photo is excellent, which probably means a true macro lens. The more I crop and enlarge, the softer some of my work becomes.

I would appreciate any guidance on a good lens to buy if I should want to go into the centre of flowers and pick out finer details, which when, cropped and enlarged in a photo editor, will not lose sharpness.

stick-dan

Anouilh wrote: »

What a beautiful photo.

I would appreciate any guidance on a good lens to buy if I should want to go into the centre of flowers and pick out finer details, which when, cropped and enlarged in a photo editor, will not lose sharpness.

Me too for that matter I'd love to be pointed in the right direction for some macro lenses that are infact true macro.

Anouilh

stick-dan wrote: »

@anouilh

use the cone flower one on the site from your signature, i had a look i think the pale pink in the flower against a b/w background would look really well, be interested to see the results.

After a bit of confusion,

http://shortsights.blogspot.com/2009/01/view-on-black-or-white-either-large-or.html

I added the link to View on Black to my blog:




[/url]

Just a tip; dusk is a very nice time to photograph some flowers.

YourName

Heres my pic, took it on Friday in the Botanic Gardens, Dublin. What do yous think???

Thirdfox

The contrast is rather low - you should adjust the levels to eek out a greater range between light and dark. Either by curves/levels control in photoshop or even just the levels adjustment in Picasa.

Nice bokeh, for me though there's not enough empty space and chopping of the top of the second flower is just a distracting.

Nice picture overall

af_thefragile

One of the first few pictures i took with my slr. Took it with the 18-55 kit lens and well they're not great, but i'm just starting out!

YourName

Thirdfox wrote: »

The contrast is rather low - you should adjust the levels to eek out a greater range between light and dark. Either by curves/levels control in photoshop or even just the levels adjustment in Picasa.

Nice bokeh, for me though there's not enough empty space and chopping of the top of the second flower is just a distracting.

Nice picture overall

Thanks mate, well it is one of my first pics, I am only starting off, I have photoshop but I am still learning how to use it.

But thanks for your comments, there very much appreciated

Anouilh

mcgowaner wrote: »

...took it on Friday in the Botanic Gardens, Dublin. What do yous think???

I really love the colours. Yellow against grey or gry-blue is very vivid, and the Bokeh is lively.

Anouilh

af_thefragile wrote: »

One of the first few pictures i took with my slr. Took it with the 18-55 kit lens and well they're not great, but i'm just starting out!

The second photo, with the foreground blur, is my favourite. The effect is very 1930's, which seeing some of the clothes in shops at the moment, is cutting edge.

Anouilh

[IMG][/img]http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1428/3352662569_4247dbea16.jpg

cnocbui

Anouilh wrote: »

I would appreciate any guidance on a good lens to buy if I should want to go into the centre of flowers and pick out finer details, which when, cropped and enlarged in a photo editor, will not lose sharpness.

Since you use a Canon, you can make use of some of the very good Olympus Zuiko lenses with OM mount, using an adapter, that were made for their film camera system. Macro photography was an Olympus specialty.

The downside is you won't get autofocus and will have to manually stop down. And then of course, the good lenses are still sought after and are not necessarily easy to find or cheap.

I think the most versatile focal length for flower photography is in the range 80-100mm.

A lens I could not recommend highly enough is the Zuiko 90mm f2 macro. It is sharp and has the most wonderful bokeh. It goes to 0.5x magnification

A terrific lens for all other purposes as well, particularly portraiture.

Another and much cheaper lens you could look at is the Tamron SP 90mm f2.5 macro adaptall-2 mount lens. Again, this is a MF lens made for 35mm film bodies and will go to 1:1. The adaptall lenses would fit almost any brand 35mm camera through use of an adapter ring for each brand, giving full aperture functionality, so finding one with a Canon adapter ring included already would be a bonus. Something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.ie/Tamron-SP-MACRO-1-2-90mm-F2-5-Canon-FD-Adaptall-2_W0QQitemZ120391423519QQcmdZViewItemQQptZDE_Elektronik_Computer_Foto_Camcorder_Objektive_PM?hash=item120391423519&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1301%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

kevo2009

I agree

DutchGuy

Or if you want to do it really cheaply - you can get cheap extension tubes and any old lens (I use a 50mm prime from my very old yashica fx-2)). You can get very good magnification that way without losing sharpness but you do end up losing quite a bit of light.

Example photo:

Anouilh

Thank you for all the good advice.

In the meantime, my Sigma apo macro zoom continues to be adequate, though I had to work hard to capture this hyper-active butterfly.[IMG][/img]http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1428/3352662569_4247dbea16.jpg

cnocbui

Olympus Zuiko 90mm f2

Lady_North

A couple from Newbridge House in Donabate last Sunday. Beautiful day with lots of daffodils to photograph.