Garden flowers - 1 June

GardenersHelper

GardenersHelper

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Nick
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These were captured hand-held using natural light in our garden with a Panasonic G80 and 45-175, some with and some without a Canon 500D close-up lens. The raw files were batch processed in DXO Optics Pro and Silkypix, with image-specific adjustments in Lightroom. There are 1300 pixel high versions in this album at Flickr.

Note for @Andy Johnson: The images were captured with the camera white balance set to auto white balance. That was picked up by Silkypix. In Lightroom I adjusted the Temp by varying amounts away from yellow and made no change to Tint. Looking at them again with a fresh eye this morning I'm not sure I like the white balance adjustment, particularly with #2, #4 and #7 which look a bit cold to me.

#1

1185 01 2017_06_01 P1390747_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#2

1185 03 2017_06_01 P1390823_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#3

1185 06 2017_06_01 P1390875_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#4

1185 07 2017_06_01 P1390921_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#5

1185 13 2017_06_01 P1390948_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#6

1185 14 2017_06_01 P1390952_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#7

1185 16 2017_06_01 P1390972_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#8

1185 21 2017_06_01 P1390989_DxO 0100RAW01cP SP7 LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 
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Andy Johnson said:
To me Nick that looks very natural, i'm not seeing the yellow cast / warmth now.
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Thanks Andrew. The lesson I take from this is that I need to pay more attention to white balance. I think that in my concentration on other aspects of my post processing it is something I have only occasionally paid attention to up to now, but I intend to make it a routine part of my workflow now. I may default to pulling the Temp down a little, and work from there.

Actually, there is of course another (double) complication here when I stop to think about it. These were natural light rather than flash, and with a different camera. Hmmm..... Don't know what impact that would have had. I'll try the same approach with the FZ330 flash work and see how it goes. The main thing is presumably to actually look at each image with white balance in mind rather than just taking them "as is" from the white balance perspective.
 
Do you use a white (or grey) card to set custom white balance in your camera - if possible?

I have often found that as the light changes so does the white balance and different cameras may have different correction algorithms which may alter the overall effect.

But lovely shots - as always!
 
petersmart said:
Do you use a white (or grey) card to set custom white balance in your camera - if possible?

I have often found that as the light changes so does the white balance and different cameras may have different correction algorithms which may alter the overall effect.

But lovely shots - as always!
Click to expand...

Thanks Peter.

White balance - oh ... this gets so complicated it makes my head hurt sometimes.

I haven't used a white or grey card to set the custom white balance in my camera, but I have used white/grey card reference shots from which to set the white balance during post processing. But I don't do that now.

I spent some time experimenting with camera profiles using an Xrite Color Checker. It is written up in my Journey thread starting with this post (which as noted at the top of the post has significant errors in it) and continuing in some posts on the following two pages of that thread. My conclusion was that camera profiles do not produce the "definitive" colours that one can be led to believe they do by what one reads about them, and nor do they produce the same colours in each camera, as is claimed. Another thing is that they need to be used in conjunction with white/grey cards (either to set the camera white balance or for white balance reference shots). And it seemed that white card reference shots had far more effect than colour profiles. So I concentrated on using white card reference shots.

And later I realised that even this was not straightforward. For example, suppose you have an insect in a coloured background of yellow foliage. That may produce a yellow cast on the subject. Now, can you get a white card near enough to where the insect is to correctly pick up that cast? Insects can be small, tucked away inside a flower or foliage, or underneath a translucent leaf. Quite apart from the size and enclosed location issues, Insects can also be quite jumpy. Getting a good white card reading may be impossible. And then, in any case, how useful is such a white care reading going to be? It will tell you how to adjust the colours so as to make something white appear white, but if there is an environmental colour cast do you really want to get rid of it and make it look as though it isn't there?

Consider a light coloured spider underneath a green translucent leaf that is casting a green hue from the light transmitted through it. Making that hue disappear would make the colour of the spider inconsistent with the nature of its surroundings. I don't really want to do that. Similarly, when photographing during the golden hour at the end of the day the colours are very different from earlier in the day, and that is one of the attractions of the golden hour, so I don't want to "correct" that different colouring to make it go away. And what white balance could one use when there is mixed illumination in a shot, perhaps some areas in direct sunlight, some in shadow, some subject to environmental casts, coupled perhaps with some mixtures of flash and natural light (which can happen when using flash as the main light source or for fill).

Some time ago I was discussing this with a friend and she asked why, if these techniques don't produce definitive/objective results, why do I both with them. If you are going to adjust the colours by eye anyway so they look right to you, why don't you just do that without going through the rigmarole of white card stuff?

I didn't have an answer to that. I have occasionally used white card reference shots since then, but not often, because I've always ended up doing it by eye anyway even when I had white card shots.
 
Lovely set Nick. Another nice take on Nigella, and I like the Poppy. The light and PP really shows up that fragile papery texture.
 
GardenersHelper said:
Thanks Peter.

White balance - oh ... this gets so complicated it makes my head hurt sometimes.

I haven't used a white or grey card to set the custom white balance in my camera, but I have used white/grey card reference shots from which to set the white balance during post processing. But I don't do that now.

I spent some time experimenting with camera profiles using an Xrite Color Checker. It is written up in my Journey thread starting with this post (which as noted at the top of the post has significant errors in it) and continuing in some posts on the following two pages of that thread. My conclusion was that camera profiles do not produce the "definitive" colours that one can be led to believe they do by what one reads about them, and nor do they produce the same colours in each camera, as is claimed. Another thing is that they need to be used in conjunction with white/grey cards (either to set the camera white balance or for white balance reference shots). And it seemed that white card reference shots had far more effect than colour profiles. So I concentrated on using white card reference shots.

And later I realised that even this was not straightforward. For example, suppose you have an insect in a coloured background of yellow foliage. That may produce a yellow cast on the subject. Now, can you get a white card near enough to where the insect is to correctly pick up that cast? Insects can be small, tucked away inside a flower or foliage, or underneath a translucent leaf. Quite apart from the size and enclosed location issues, Insects can also be quite jumpy. Getting a good white card reading may be impossible. And then, in any case, how useful is such a white care reading going to be? It will tell you how to adjust the colours so as to make something white appear white, but if there is an environmental colour cast do you really want to get rid of it and make it look as though it isn't there?

Consider a light coloured spider underneath a green translucent leaf that is casting a green hue from the light transmitted through it. Making that hue disappear would make the colour of the spider inconsistent with the nature of its surroundings. I don't really want to do that. Similarly, when photographing during the golden hour at the end of the day the colours are very different from earlier in the day, and that is one of the attractions of the golden hour, so I don't want to "correct" that different colouring to make it go away. And what white balance could one use when there is mixed illumination in a shot, perhaps some areas in direct sunlight, some in shadow, some subject to environmental casts, coupled perhaps with some mixtures of flash and natural light (which can happen when using flash as the main light source or for fill).

Some time ago I was discussing this with a friend and she asked why, if these techniques don't produce definitive/objective results, why do I both with them. If you are going to adjust the colours by eye anyway so they look right to you, why don't you just do that without going through the rigmarole of white card stuff?

I didn't have an answer to that. I have occasionally used white card reference shots since then, but not often, because I've always ended up doing it by eye anyway even when I had white card shots.
Click to expand...

I have used white cards where there has been an overall colour - e.g photographing a poppy close up where the overall red colour will throw the camera's auto WB.

In this case I just take a general shot of the card in whatever the prevailing weather conditions are and set the camera to that then reset it after I've finished.

As for small insects and a colour cast by the foliage there is not much you can do about that but I do use it also if in a wood where the overall light will give, in summer, a greeny cast - get rid of that and the colours will appear more natural.

But every one to his own and I certainly cannot say that your pictures are anything but outstanding.
 
Cloudforest said:
Lovely set Nick. Another nice take on Nigella, and I like the Poppy. The light and PP really shows up that fragile papery texture.
Click to expand...

Thanks Pete. Nigella is one of my favourites, looking good in bud, flowering and the seed pods too.

#2 is Cistus x purpureus (so my wife tells me). We have three Cistuses, all rather good looking to my eye. One of them (with much smaller flowers than this one) is quite good for bees and other insects. All three flower profusely, two of them (and this is one of them) over a very long period.
 
petersmart said:
I have used white cards where there has been an overall colour - e.g photographing a poppy close up where the overall red colour will throw the camera's auto WB.

In this case I just take a general shot of the card in whatever the prevailing weather conditions are and set the camera to that then reset it after I've finished.

As for small insects and a colour cast by the foliage there is not much you can do about that but I do use it also if in a wood where the overall light will give, in summer, a greeny cast - get rid of that and the colours will appear more natural.
Click to expand...

Hmmm...... Depends on how aware one is of the colours in real life I suppose. To someone aware of the green cast (I don't think this would be me btw, I don't think my colour awareness is up to it) I suppose removing it would look unnatural. But it might look more appealing all the same.

I've never really gone for verisimilitude, because I'm not aware enough (and don't have memory enough) to know what a scene actually looked like when I get round to processing images of it. I like something that seems credible (to me at least) and appealing (ditto).

petersmart said:
But every one to his own
Click to expand...

That's the key I think. We each have to find our own way.

petersmart said:
and I certainly cannot say that your pictures are anything but outstanding.
Click to expand...

You are very kind Sir. :)
 
GardenersHelper said:
Thanks Pete. Nigella is one of my favourites, looking good in bud, flowering and the seed pods too.

#2 is Cistus x purpureus (so my wife tells me). We have three Cistuses, all rather good looking to my eye. One of them (with much smaller flowers than this one) is quite good for bees and other insects. All three flower profusely, two of them (and this is one of them) over a very long period.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the id of #2 Nick. I'll have to look out for some, especially if they flower for a while.
 
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