New Photography Setup

Walter_Pall

Chris,
the first photos were taken with available light. They came out a bit blue and were darkened with my picture manipulating program. The sesond ones were taken with direkt flash form the camera and a slave flash in addition from the left side. They came out a bit blue again and rather light. I have darkened them a bit with my program.
It came as a big surprise to me that all the effort with two flashes was hardly noticable. I have decided to just take pictures without a flash if I ahve this sort of available light. Certainly enough for just working pictures. With pics for publishing I would wait for sunlight anyway.
The big deal is that so far I always had to wait for sunlight and no wind and feeling like carrying the huge backdrop etc.. Now I just shoot a picture and it will be alright in general, sometimes even good enough for publishing in a magazine but always good enough to publish on the internet or send by e-mail.

We'll see how this works in sunlight tomorrow.

best regards
Walter Pall

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treenut

With a 75kb file limit we'll never get to see your trees at their best, how about setting up some personal webspace and providing a link, then you can show your trees at better resolutions, they appear blurry, have you tried the sharpen setting in your photo editing software?

I have sharpened your pic to see what it looks like.

Attached Images

walters tree.jpg (31.5 KB, 479 views)

simon

Wow Walter that is great a much better idea than draping material or standing up card, I also have to say I really like this larch I remember seeing it in the bonsai handbook by David Prescot it obviously made a lasting impression
warm regards Simon

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Walter_Pall

with sunshine the pictures are clearly better
Walter Pall

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Walter_Pall

apple tree with available light

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dscn5060v2.jpg (30.7 KB, 382 views)

Walter_Pall

with front flash and darkened later
Walter

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Attila

Walter,
I am no photo expert but I am doing some home study on nature/lanscape photography. I've just read two books written by award-winning lanscape photographers and they are saying that when they photograph plants, flowers, etc. the best light is on cloudy days. That's because there is no sharp contrast between the shady and the sun-lit areas, and the colours are also richer in this subdued light.
They avoid bright sunlight.
They also use flash that is set to FILL (providing secondary light to 'fill' the shady areas).

Attila

Treebeard

After experimenting with various setups, I have arrived at this one. It is quite easy to set up, and relatively cheap to acquire. The backdrop is a blue blackout blind from argos. The base is a piece of MDF from B & Q.

As mentioned by Atilla, I seem to get the best results when it is cloudy but still bright.

My only reservation is the intensity of the blue. Does it overpower the subject, or is it OK? My own thoughts are that it looks fine, but I am interested in what others think.

You can see some pictures taken with this setup in my gallery.

Regards,

TB

Attached Images

coolpix 063.jpg (64.9 KB, 228 views)

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Mittar

Treebeard,

Run us off a couple of photos with that setup and we'll be able to better tell you if it's overpowering. From the pic you posted it looks a bit bright.

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