Essentials Cafe

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get some really good shots of red flowers?  I always seem attracted to them (and red is my fav color) but when I take the picture (digitally) the reds seem blown out and lacking detail. I can enhance them with E4 but if there is a improved or better way to take the picture I think I could do more with it.  I know one part of the problem can be matching reds in monitors, printers, etc.   My camera takes great pictures, its Canon, but reds seem to be the weak spot. I have tried all of the various times of day too, I get my best shots sometime after 3 or 4 pm as I am on the east coast of the US.  Thanks.

I use a sony DSLR an it does pretty well if the flower is a close up.  Here are several suggestions.

Set your camera to expose at -0.3 EV so the flower is under exposed, this will saturate the picture more

Use spot metering so it exposes on the flower itself and does not average the background.

Use a flash on ourdoor close up pictures such as flowers or portraits.

I often the saturation level in the computer if needed so don't worry about that and use high pass sharpen or unsharp mask to sharpen detail.  Use any one of these at a time to see what works best for you.  Hope this helps.

Ron

Hi asimalady - Firstly I think that digital is the way to go when photographing flowers, but some cameras record reds as "hot" the rest of the spectrum can be accurate but red can be lacking in detail, giving the appearance of being flood coated with a single red tone, with very little shadow or highlight detail. The reds can be too saturated and appear burnt out. I prefer to photograph flowers in studio conditions where I am totally in control of the lighting, but if you are shooting out in the open I can understand your problem. You say you have a Canon camera, but not which one, neither do I know which graphics programmes you use for manipulating your images. However there are ways around this problem with the hot reds. If you could give me a little more info on which camera you are using, and what programmes you use, I will try and devise a means of curing this for you. Better still, if you could e-mail me one of these hot red shots I will then be able to assess which method to use for your particular camera, and whatever graphics programme you prefer to use. I would say that the way you photograph the flowers is not the real problem, but rather the way your particular camera handles reds. Bright sunshine is not good for flower photography, an overcast day is usually better, because there is far less contrast. Digital is better at coping than most film, but there are limits in any medium.

 Thanks so much for all of your helpful ideas. I will try the things you mentioned and Toulousse mentioned to me.  I appreciate  all the help I can get.  I do usually take closeups because I want to let others see the parts of a flower not usually noticed. I have a few red shots and i will post them here for everyone's thoughts.

t

Here is a site that has a lot of tips on color management.  http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/links.html

This is their section on test images.  I'm not a color management expert but do use the Spyder 3 to cal my monitor.  I think these images should look correct on the monitor if it is close to being calibrated.  If reds look bad this may be a clue as well.

Test images: http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/test_images.html