Trying to get the shot in the field

[Andrea B.]

There was a bit of discussion elsewhere about shooting documentary photography "in the field" -- about how long it takes and the other difficulties as we literally sit in fields and try to shoot the little posies bopping around in the wind. As I was working this morning on a P. recta post, I made some crops to show you. Even if you refocus every time before a shutter press, the flower still moves a little bit. Sigh.

 

UV with BaaderU

blur.

this is probably the best one.

blur.

flash did not fire.

blur.

not too bad.

blur, too dark.

The finished UV will look something like this after white balance and adjustment of brights/darks. And it will look even better after resizing downwards.

 

IR

not too bad.

way too dark.

probably the best one.

center not too bad but petals not shown are blurred. too dark.

center not too bad but petals not shown are blurred. too dark.

The finished IR will look something like this after some work on the local contrasts. IR is inherently a bit softer so there's not much we can do to carve out tiny details without creating other artifacts, as you can see. This one will also look better after resizing downwards.

 

 

The entire UV photo as shot, resized to 1000 px.

 

Finished UV crop?? Resized to 1000 px.

 

As it turned out during this shoot, the AndreaU gave me the best photo that day.

No crop, resized to 1000px. I might clean up some of the background a bit.

[Andy Perrin]

Andrea, is there anything you can do about really GLOSSY flowers? The buttercups in particular give me major problems! I spent a few hours last summer trying to grab this one, for example, and it is the final result, not the intermediate stages, all of which were even worse. Focussing seemed really hard.

 

Or this one, which I overprocessed, trying to fix the badness. :(

Save

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[Andrea B.]

The glossy areas on buttercups are quite specularly (and spectacularly :D ) reflective. So you are going to get that buttercup gloss no matter what. But it is part of the flower, so should actually be recorded in your photograph.

Added: .....if it is there. We don't always see it in every buttercup. May have to do with flower age or conditions. Or if shot indoors, the lighting.

 

Shoot from different angles so that the gloss reflection does not shine directly back into your lens to cause flare.

Use an app with a good highlight control so that what highlights can be brought back will be.

Added: Specular blowout cannot be returned to the correct color because all 3 channels are blown in that area.

 

Sometimes it helps to bracket your shots in 1/3 steps around the metered (or chosen) exposure setting. You might be able to combine one shot well exposed for dark areas and one shot well exposed for highlights. Or, it might turn out that the shot which best preserves the highlights and specular blowout can be brightened in the darker areas more easily than the shot which best preserves the dark areas can have its highlights brought under control.

 

Andy these look pretty good I think.

 

There's a reference about the glossiness in these two posts.

http://www.ultraviol...tall-buttercup/

http://www.ultraviol...ical-buttercup/

[Andy Perrin]

The problem is not just the glossiness blowing things out, it's that it seems to make it hard for me to focus by liveview? See how in my second pic the rear petal is in focus but the middle is blurry? That was not on purpose! I couldn't seem to tell what was sharp on the little Sony screen while trying to do the live view. I thought it might be something to do with the glossiness tricking my eye? I did have the liveview magnification set to 1:1.

[Andrea B.]

Try using a UV-LED flash to shine on the dark areas of the flower while focusing in Live View.

 

It very well could be that the bright reflections distract the eye. Also if you have any kind of focus peaking or zebras set in the Sony, then that could be misleading.

 

I don't recall the exact Sony model you are using. Sometimes having a camera with better Live View is a nice thing to save up for?

 

There is also focus bracketing. If it seems difficult to find the plane of focus, then make a shot on your best guess. After that, move the focus ring a tiny little bitty bit and shoot again. Repeat several times - focusing both forward and backward from your best guess. This takes some time but might increase your chances of bringing home something with the focus you want.

 

In the olden days.........when I was shooting UV with the D200, I had to focus wide open, then stop down and add the UV-pass filter. This of course necessitated lots of subsequent focus bracketing due to UV focus shift or aperture focus shift in the lens. (Yes even the good lenses!!!) I'm very happy not to have to do that quite so much anymore thanks to Live View. But Live View is not perfect.

[Andy Perrin]

Yeah, I actually did focus bracket (that's what most of the time was spent on, in fact: taking all those photos!). Will try with the UV-LED light when the flowers come back. I'm using the NEX-7? I thought that maybe my next camera would be one of those fancy Sony A7S's? If they can shoot in moonlight, shouldn't they be pretty good for UV?

[Andrea B.]

Prolly should add: You have to make a choice when shooting close to the little flower.

Do you want to show the petal details in focus? Or do you want to show the center parts in focus?

Can't usually have both in one shot unless you have a very very flat flower. :D

So there's always focus stacking to solve that problem. I do a small bit of that with 2-6 frames.

 

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I'm not sure you can extrapolate from low visible light to low UV light unless you know the specifics of how Sony is managing this.

[Andy Perrin]

It seems to be a full frame camera with 12 megapixels, so making the pixel size larger (more photons per pixel...) seems to be one strategy, which I would think WOULD carry over to UV.

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Andrea, how do you organize your step-down/up rings and things? I am getting to the point where searching for the one I want is starting to take a while. I have a little plastic drawer thingy that I use to store my camera stuff, but all the adapters are in one drawer all mixed together. Do they make some kind of thing for organizing those? I was picturing something like an old fashioned card catalog maybe.