Forbidden Fruit...

[Remorhaz]

During our macro day at the Royal Botanic Gardens I found this interesting set of flower heads atop this plant and decided to use off camera light to turn day into night. I shot stopped down (f/16) at my camera's sync speed (1/200th) and used my LED macro ring light and my SB-900 flash handheld to provide the lighting

Fruit


and this one which I've converted to monochrome

Forbidden Fruit

[biggerry]

colour.

the BW conversion has left it flat and without depth. Look at the light on the left most fruit, the colour version has depth and texture, the BW has smashed the dynamic range and left it flat. imo. suren it.

[Mj]

Mmm...

The colour version has nice tonal depth that you've lost with this b&w conversion.
But the colour version has too much distraction in the background.
You could either take the colour version and selectively adjust the background (lower exposure and contrast and maybe a little desat).
Or play with the b&w... maybe blend two b&w conversions to get the right result.

[Remorhaz]

colour. the BW conversion has left it flat and without depth. Look at the light on the left most fruit, the colour version has depth and texture, the BW has smashed the dynamic range and left it flat. imo. suren it.

Thanks Gerry - actually I don't think it's the conversion but what I did when taking the shot. I was trying not to let light spill onto the leaves just behind and so the angle and closeness of the light has caused it to be flatter I expect - see original colour version here:

[Mj]

#1 and #3 are not the same shot are they? Exposure of #3 has the same loss of range as #2.
If you combined the background of #3 with the foreground of #1 you'd have it... if you think it's worth the trouble of course.

[Remorhaz]

#1 and #3 are not the same shot are they? Exposure of #3 has the same loss of range as #2. If you combined the background of #3 with the foreground of #1 you'd have it... if you think it's worth the trouble of course.

No - #2 and #3 are the same shot - they were my attempt to try and not light the leaves at the back (at capture time) but as Gerry noticed this totally flattened the lighting on the Canna Lily pods.
Note that in #1 given the leaves were lit I've accentuated this a bit in post for this image