This will not be of interest to those who are here for the technology; move right along. It will also not be of interest to serious photographers, who scoff at bright pretty pictures of bright pretty flowers.
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My personal favorite photographer, Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, has repeatedly and cogently advised me that contrast is the enemy, and that to best capture the essence of a flower, you want to get out of the sun. My problem is that it’s when I see ’em all lit up that I get photo-lust and go running for the camera.
So if that’s the only kind I’m going to take, I’ll just have to figure out how to do it. These ones make use of the K20D’s “Enhanced dynamic range” function. I even took side-by-side shots with the EDR on and off, and the difference is subtle but real.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Ted Mook (Apr 28 2008, at 04:48)
Tim:
I enjoy your site very much, still thinking about the engineer's perspective on being overloaded.
As for the tulips, you might very much enjoy the Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan, if you haven't already read it. Big section on Tulips.
ted mook
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From: robert (Apr 28 2008, at 05:04)
I'f you're interested in what flowers can be, look into what Ernst Haas did. Been gone a while, but you should still be able to find something. There was a 2007 calendar from his stock. Might be gotten cheap.
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From: Stuart Marks (Apr 28 2008, at 18:45)
I like the flower pictures.
Even though it might be bright and sunny out when you see the flowers and get photo-lust, you can control the contrast with a diffusion or reflector panel. Try it out; you might like the difference. That's the great thing about digital. The marginal cost of doing little experiments is very small, and you get quick feedback.
Do you have problems with color balance? If you fill the frame with a highly saturated color, the auto white balance on my old camera (Nikon Coolpix 990) would throw the colors off. The workaround is to set color balance manually. I haven't noticed this problem with my new camera (Nikon D80) but then again I haven't done a critical assessment of this aspect yet.
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