I wonder if anyone can give me some advice about a photo shoot situation I will be encountering this weekend. I have done hundreds and hundreds of portrait and modeling shots and seem to have good to excellent results with those, but this weekend I am supposed to shoot orchid blossoms at a flower show. Typically when I do this kind of work I end up with too shallow depth of field in many of the photos.
What lens would you suggest for getting good closeups of orchid blossoms, and what F-stop ? I can jack up the ASA to 1800. Do you think the result would help me get good depth of field. Any advice ?
I attach a modeling shot just to show I am not a complete dunce, just a partial one.
Here is one of my fav flower pictures and the settings I used.
Canon T3i
f/5.6
1/125 sec
iso-200
-1 step
FL - 113mm
An actual macro lens if you have or can borrow one. 100mm is real good. A real macro lens has sharp focus from center to edge.
Your portrait lens should be quite acceptable, though. Getting the whole flower in the frame will be close up, not "True Macro" (aka 1:1 magnification).
Ring flash adapter like what Nikonian72 uses will help. F11 or so and ISO 400 or 800 will be a real good start.
If you can't come up with a ring flash, take a look at the "Macro Equipment Setups" in the macro forum here for home made ideas.
http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-32754-1.htmlThere is a lot of good ideas and examples here too:
http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/s-113-1.html
These were no flash on a sunny day.
I manage a medium percentage of the time to get good photos, but I think the advice here will help me increase my percentage. Here are a few flower shots I have done where I extracted the flower and set it again a black background in order to make tiles.
Richard94611 wrote:
I manage a medium percentage of the time to get good photos, but I think the advice here will help me increase my percentage. Here are a few flower shots I have done where I extracted the flower and set it again a black background in order to make tiles.
Very nice. I shoot a lot more trashers than keepers too. But it keeps me learning.
I just shot these this weekend at our local show.
http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-106541-1.html 100mm macro lens and used a speedlite for fill flash. All shot around F/22 but only for the depth in each individual flower. I like them dark but you can adjust for that. Orchids are in clusters for the most part so I also use an 18-200mm my walk around lens to get close shots of the clusters, and close enough for the flash to work. Adjust flash as needed. Couple of challenges, one getting the right WB as they use 3 or 4 different bulbs in what ever place you'll be, second challenge shooting the flowers with the right background. If your experienced should be a walk in the park. I always photograph the odd ones, have fun.
I would like to come away from a flower shoot with 50 acceptable shots instead of 20 or 25 out of 300. With certain orchids, getting one blossom is fairly easy, but getting two or three in the same shot more difficult because they are different distances away from the camera even though they are almost touching each other. I have a lot of great photos -- the result of accidents, I am afraid. I would bet that almost everyone here knows more about the technical aspect of photography than I will ever be able to learn.
RocketScientist wrote:
Very nice.
Richard94611 wrote:
I would like to come away from a flower shoot with 50 acceptable shots instead of 20 or 25 out of 300. With certain orchids, getting one blossom is fairly easy, but getting two or three in the same shot more difficult because they are different distances away from the camera even though they are almost touching each other. I have a lot of great photos -- the result of accidents, I am afraid. I would bet that almost everyone here knows more about the technical aspect of photography than I will ever be able to learn.
I would like to come away from a flower shoot with... (
show quote)
The more you play, the more you learn. Bring a tripod or monopod to make life easier.
Use a flash and a zoom lens. The more you zoom the better DOF you get. Crank down the aperture F/16 to F/22. You won't be able to get the entire cluster in focus if you photographing one plant at a time. If you photograph a whole display standing back the depth will look better
Richard94611 wrote:
I would like to come away from a flower shoot with 50 acceptable shots instead of 20 or 25 out of 300. With certain orchids, getting one blossom is fairly easy, but getting two or three in the same shot more difficult because they are different distances away from the camera even though they are almost touching each other. I have a lot of great photos -- the result of accidents, I am afraid. I would bet that almost everyone here knows more about the technical aspect of photography than I will ever be able to learn.
I would like to come away from a flower shoot with... (
show quote)
Just an idea, I used a mirror on this shot.
Color change Orchid. Looks red in sunlight, purple in incondescent light.
Has anyone mentioned photo stacking? As I understand it, it is relatively easy to take multiple shots of the same image at different focal lengths then use the stacking feature in Photoshop.
Haveago
Loc: Swindon, Wiltshire. UK.
Richard, take a small water spray as well for that wet look, the flowers not you. :-)
Baz
Your portraits are nice, however, as I am sure you know, when doing close-ups your depth of field drops drastically. Will this take place in an area where you can use available light ? If so you might try focus stacking. If you have not done this before I recommend practice first. Also using this method you "cannot" have any subject movement. With FS it is also easy to control the background. If you need to use flash I would recommend either a ring light, Nikonian should be able to help with that, or indirect or bounce flash. Indirect or diffused lighting is best for flowers. Good luck.
You can get good results with any number of focal length lenses. Try to stop down as far as possible for most DOF & Shoot parallel to a bract of flowers to aid in getting all of them in focus. Additional lighting helps to get smaller apertures for the additional DOF...I shoot lots of flowers....Here's a link to some on one of my Flickr sets...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/screaminscott/sets/72157594388593116/
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