White balance/color standards? Photographing accurate bloom color

[camille1585]

I am not a pro by any means, but have been shooting with a DSLR for 10 years, and using Lightroom for nearly just as long.

Sounds like you are far more knowledgeable than I (or most of us here), so if you struggle with color accuracy, what hope is there for the rest of us??

For me purple-pinks are impossible to get right even in Lightroom. Reds and bright yellows usually are over saturated, and I generally have to underexpose the image a bit and then edit in LR.

Over the years I've developed a sort of 'recipe' for shooting photos of orchids. Always in RAW, in bright natural midday light and the camera is always on a tripod so that I can stop down pretty far to get good DOF. (usually around f/14-18). For most orchids that works quite well and the colors are almost spot on. I do edit the shadows a bit in post-processing since I don't have any external flashes (but do use a small flashlight aimed at crinkled aluminium foil which serves as a reflector).

If I'm shooting a tricky color then I'll always do a test shot (with the exact same settings) of a white piece of placed in front of the plant. I use that in LR to tweak the white balance.

I actually really like using my macro lens for photos of whole plants. It means setting the tripod at the other end of the room, but it really helps detach the subject from the black background.

[DirtyCoconuts]

you totally got my thinking. and it is just the best i can get, not really a fix


the other thing i will do is take a few differently lit shots bc the "true" color seems to change in a lot of settings so showing a few lets the viewer really know the flower the way i do. ideally i would have a midday, a golden hour, and a night shot with direct lighting and one with indirect...i should add i wear a head lamp while i work, it has CREE and COB leds and is adjustable so i can tweak that a bit and point it at and away from the plant.


i hope to learn more from you in the future

[Leafmite]

I rarely post photos of what I am growing because my pictures are never quite as nice as what is already out there of the same orchid (I grow mainly species or clones). Most of the pictures posted here truly look professional and I enjoy them very much.

[DirtyCoconuts]

Originally Posted by Leafmite

I rarely post photos of what I am growing because my pictures are never quite as nice as what is already out there of the same orchid (I grow mainly species or clones). Most of the pictures posted here truly look professional and I enjoy them very much.

i fully respect this position but i beg you to please post and here is why.

plants and the conditions we grow them in vary a LOT. i love being able to see 100 different examples and then learn about how they were grown and then what might have led to what in the appearance or vigor. Plus, seeing the variety helps me know if i might want to look for another plant bc mine is substandard or could be better or just another variant out there.


perfect example- i never looked at grocery or big box store phal until someone here posted a peloric big lip they found at lowes. I had never even contemplated that mutation and i was immediately inspired to look for one of my own.

just my .02.... no pressure

[tmoney]

howdy!

well, meteo, sounds like you are ahead of most of us on here in your technique and understanding. while i am not a pro photographer, i have been shooting flowers in macro for over 25 years since my dad gave me his old F4 body way back in high school. while i love film, shooting now with dslr has mad everything sooooo much easier as we all know.

including changing white balance. i never use presets because each flower has a different reflectance and spectrum and therefore it seems easier to me to take a few test shots (time of day or ambient light conditions also change this) and then change the balance based on what I see in the pic vs how the actual flower looks to my eye at that moment. typically i will shoot auto white for testing (these cameras are pretty dang good at setting white balance) and then bump up or down a few clicks depending on the output. edit to add, i shoot all the orchids with uv filters, and this seems to help me get the whites right at the beginning. i can't tell you why or what is happening, but it seems like it just calms everything down and the sensor gives me better output. maybe totally wrong on this, but the filters help me a LOT!

and i use a single ring light as i like to have a shadowed effect that to me looks more natural. 2 rings on a single flower makes everything look too....i dunno, sterile (?).

for orchids i started to learn how to focus stack and that has opened up a whole new world. my computer hates me, i will tell you that much! but stacking and then doing any small color tweaks in #ps is my usual flow. to me, it was a successful shoot if i don't have to do any color balancing in post, i really try to get it in my raw images. but you know how that goes, you think it is nailed and then the next day when processing you realize just how horrible it really was, hahahahah

[JDShoots]

I will confess I have not read all the posts, and will get back to that tonight. But hands down I have found this card the best solution since I bought my first DSLR 20+ years ago. Of course RAW processing makes it very very easy. Now the guy who made this product is semi retired and has handed the rains to someone else, but they are available on amazon or elsewhere. No matter haw bad or unique your lighting is, just take a pic with this card in the set and then set your gray point to a place on the card. In a RAW processor you can then copy that to all the other frames, and your done.

WhiBal card they are all over the place, B&H, maybe your local camera store, and of course Amazon.

Amazon.com

[lobotomizedgoat]

I've considered picking up a white balance card (even creating custom color profiles for my camera) but my laziness still exceeds my desire for accuracy. Of course, it's just a hobby for me.

My own low-effort strategy when out and about taking close-ups at a show or greenhouse is to take a lot of cell phone pictures along the way. The colors on my cell pics are usually trash, but this gets me the labels (often white) and a variety of other colors I can still use as reference later when fiddling with the white balance on my "real" photos. It's crude, but provides a useful sanity check if I'm processing RAW files months later.

I find it easier with my new mirrorless EVF camera too; in part because I can see as I take the shot how far off the WB is and adjust, and probably because the auto-WB feature is better than on my ancient DSLR.

---------- Post added at 12:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:39 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Roberta

Another technique that yields wonderful results in macro photography of small flowers especially, is stacking.

I've done this at home to get the entirety of a cattleya bloom in focus while maintaining nice bokeh on the background, but, Uhg!

When not in such controlled conditions I just set my focus on a spot I like and call the rest of the blur my "artistic touch" =)