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hi all, just wanted sum ideas on improving
These two pics i just took with the sun behind me
camera is 400D with 18-55mm lens on
one was shot in macro mode and the other manual mode
im looking for pointers to improve my pathetic skills


all comments welcome

!~DeViNe~DaRkNeSs~!
I'm guessing the dark background caused a little over-exposure of your flower. When there is a dramatic difference between the brightness of your subject and the background you will get a more accurate exposure by switching your camera to "spot metering" mode.

What Matt said, change your camera to spot meter, or center valued metering if you camera does not have a spot meter.


Try underexposing the scene for this compensation. The yellow is just too bright and have 'clipped' through the highlight details, which is an exposure problem with photographing red or yellow flowers, they seem to be most likely to overexpose.

Excellent, thanks guys for helping
i just tried again this time with centre-weighted average metering....also has partial metering & also evaluative.
it could be my PS'ing that is the prob as well sa i may get alittle click happy with the sliders
try #3

Edit ..#4 has NO photoshopping at all...just resized

The last one seems to have the exposure good, Good tonal contrast between F/G & Back, but I still find the background too distracting. Blur it some more maybe. Tone down the background brights left of flower in PP? Crop some more?

Oddly I find the background less distracting in the first of the second series.
Perhaps because the flower is in its context in the shot rather than separated in the second Food for thought for me at least.

Greg

Ok, you seem to have got the right exposure in #4, now to play with a little composition? Background is too busy for a single subject to display (flower in this case).

If you use your flash and stop down to make up fot the extra light then you can get the background to fade into blackness and just keep the flower standing out on its own. I find this works well for the macro botany shots I do for work.
Regards Colin

Thanks Heaps guys!!!
Colin_12 - what sort of f-stop are we talking here? like as small as i can such as f22?
i only have onboard flash i used it for one pic (f4.6) and the flower was basically white
i think i know how u mean, basically cut the light right back and let the flash illuminate the flower so it stands out alone.....
Thanks for the help guys it is another small step in my journey

f22 to f10 would be fine. I can get f57 according to the camera out of my 105 macro at closest focus.
All you need to do is alter your exposure time to get the shot you want.
If it is over exposing go faster, if under then slower.
Some times tripod is neccessary.
Regards Colin

Try setting your flash to highest sync available, 1/200 or 1/250 depending on your camera.

Underexpose the scene by about 1.5~2.0stops, bump up flash EV by 1.5~2.0 stops, then you have blacked out the entire scene but force the flash to fill your subject. As a result, your subject will have a good exposure but your background will not

Yi-P wrote:Try setting your flash to highest sync available, 1/200 or 1/250 depending on your camera.

Underexpose the scene by about 1.5~2.0stops, bump up flash EV by 1.5~2.0 stops, then you have blacked out the entire scene but force the flash to fill your subject. As a result, your subject will have a good exposure but your background will not

Just be careful as this can sometimes produce harsh shadowing...which may not be what you are after (unless you are using a reflector, bouncing the flash or using multiple flash units)....