the yellows

[arghman]

My camera's got a case of the yellows
(think blues but w/ the other side of the color wheel)
I find it fiendishly difficult to take pictures of bright yellow objects in sunny weather. any suggestions? (other than turning down the exposure or blocking the sunlight and/or waiting for clouds)

this is the latest victim, a Xyris difformis which otherwise would have been a good shot. (I can't tell you how many Geum peckii shots have also been washed out by sunshine. another difficult plant.)

 

[DougPaul]

Have you checked your color balance setting? Did you process a raw image or is it the JPEG straight from the camera?

Actually, the histograms don't look that bad for balance, but there is some overexposure, particularly in the second image:

Maybe you just need a bit less exposure--the saturation could be obscuring the details in the flowers.

Doug

 

[forestgnome]

Thanks for posting the images...cool flowers! Jim Salge ( or was it Darren?)suggests a cheese cloth umbrella. I meant to try it this summer but did not. I had similar difficulty with mountain avens. Have you tried that?

 

[arghman]

Jim Salge ( or was it Darren?)suggests a cheese cloth umbrella. I meant to try it this summer but did not. I had similar difficulty with mountain avens. Have you tried that?

i haven't quite got to the point where I start to bring accessories like that (perhaps someday). I did try experimenting with the white balance setting (per DougPaul's recommendation) on a couple of recent occasions w/ difficult light (both high + low) and that does seem to help -- one of the few settings on my camera that I haven't tried using. Seems the camera will do very well if you guide it towards the right operating conditions. thanks!

on a tangent, fyi apparently most Xyris spp bloom only in the morning so if you get there late in the day you've missed it. this one closed up in about 1hr while we were eating lunch at a bog.

 

[Neil]

It looks like a properly exposed yellow flower will yield a generally underexposed picture. I bet the flower has a high albedo. (Not to be confused with libido)

This looks like a job for the selection tool and all that jazz!

I've never done it but this makes sense to me: select flower -new layer via cut - adjust the lighting of the photo minus the flower etc. etc. - flatten image - save as.

 

[DougPaul]

It looks like a properly exposed yellow flower will yield a generally underexposed picture. I bet the flower has a high albedo. (Not to be confused with libido)

This looks like a job for the selection tool and all that jazz!

I've never done it but this makes sense to me: select flower -new layer via cut - adjust the lighting of the photo minus the flower etc. etc. - flatten image - save as.

You might also be able to bring the background up sufficiently simply by raising the gamma. Might as well try the simple stuff before reaching for the more complicated techniques...

My standard viewer (xv) has a gamma adjustment (a specific class of intensity curves) and also allows one to draw in a range of intensity curves--just playing with them can enhance a pic and/or be very enlightening. Give it a try if you have such a viewer available. (In fact, I find that some people tend to post rather dark images and I need to raise the gamma on my display just so I can seem them better.)

Doug

 

[darren]

I'm the proponent of cheesecloth, but if you don't have that you can use a white tshirt. If you are wearing one, just take it off and hold it over the flower to get an even diffused light on the flower. You will have to use a remote shutter release, or use the cameras timer, or have a 2nd person hold the tshirt while you work the camera.

- darren

 

[arghman]

I'm the proponent of cheesecloth, but if you don't have that you can use a white tshirt.

hey, that's not a bad idea. thanks!

edit: either that or I should get a white backpack cover. (something that can do double-duty)