Seeing Red, and then more red.

[biggerry]

Such a troublesome colour, it is quite hard to get a true representation of what the scene looks like when there is a large percentage of it one colour, in particular red. The main thing I found helped was adjusting the colour cast, ar ethere any guidelines or tricks out there for dealing with images dominated by the colour red?!

anyway, colin and his macro fungi got me inspired to get out the macro again....





pheww.. just to break things up...




thoughts, suggestion, comments welcome.

[aim54x]

Very nice gerry, I think I will ahve to start waking up earlier and taking the big 180mm out for walks.

WIth the red, they do look a big dull and blue, I always have problems with red so I will be all ears (eyes) if anyone has any tips as to how to get this right.

[kab]

G'day Gerry,

Nice images, particularly the 1st.

I don't have any real experience photographing strong vibrant colours, but, one thing I have played with that may help you is, shooting with uniwb. This will allow you to obtain the most accurate exposure in the field ie. exposing the most to the right without clipping. The rest is up to your post processeing.

Basically the histogram you're seeing in the camera (even if you shoot raw) is not a true representation of the raw historgram. Shooting with a flat tone curve and using uniwb as preset wb image makes the histogram a very close representation to the real raw histogram. There will be a green cast to your images, so you will need to take a shot with the correct wb for post pro. There's a few huge threads at dpreview explaining this in more detail then you know what to do with.

I've done some rudimentary tests with this technique, and as they suggest, you can sometimes get around 1 stop extra dynamic range by exposing to the right more, and you are assured that you won't clip the reds if you're watching the histogram closely. Without uniwb, you can sometime clip the reds even if the histogram shows no clipping.

I rarely use this technique, but would probably give it a go for something like this. Hope this helps.

Cheers
Keith

[aim54x]

Ironic discovery with a preset WB, my D300 benefits greatly, but my last encounter with my S5 Pro is that my reds become weird! Skin tones come out nicely, but red becomes desaturated and dull, whereas auto WB with the S5 Pro under the same conditions worked better....maybe I was doing something wrong.

I will have to give it another go next time I have the S5 out. Yes I have to give the preset custom another go with the D300 before I go and shoot something bright red as well.

[ozimax]

Like 1 & 2 Gerry. I would like to acquire a 100mm F2.8 macro (Canon), but after having just purchased (another) Canon L lens, I will have to wait a while.

Reds are a bit hard to photograph, along with blues. I remember my old D70 would really struggle with blues in particular. You've done well with these indeed.

[surenj]

Awesome shots Gerry! #1 and #3 are good canvas candidates

Are these available light or flash lit?

[biggerry]

WIth the red, they do look a big dull and blue,

yeah it is hard to fine that balance between dull deep red and bright over saturated red....

I found I had to work hard to recover decent colour from those ones I shot slightly under exposed to get the aperture smaller, which i think kinda leads on from what Keith is saying.

waking up earlier

nah never, these were in the avro...

exposing the most to the right without clipping

Shooting with a flat tone curve and using uniwb as preset wb image makes the histogram a very close representation to the real raw histogram

Thanks for the detailed response Keith, very helpful, one thing i did not do at all thru these shots was look at the histogram *slaps hand* bad gerry. I really should have had more of a think about this when I was doing it. I did have it in my head that the red, which was really firey deep red (the first protrays the colour the best imo) but it did not really click.

few huge threads at dpreview

ta for the heads up, wonder if their search works properly yet

D300 before I go and shoot something bright red as well.

yeah that would be good cam, interesting to see the results from the D300.

Like 1 & 2 Gerry

ta ozi, The leaves were such a brillant red and all i wanted to do was try and show that in the picture - i even de-saturated some images cause they looked sooo red!

would like to acquire a 100mm F2.8 macro (Canon)

I will have to wait a while.

yes ya better, all these 70-200's around it making me alittle envious...

[biggerry]

Are these available light or flash lit?

ta surenj, these were taken about 3:30pm all in natural light, no flash at all..... yeah canvas is a good idea, but i wonder how they will print, I printed a flower which was dominated by yellow on 8x10 and it looked very different to the screen version, much darker and more orangey, so I am afraid the same may happen with the red?!

[aim54x]

No worries Gerry there is plenty of red (shot in AWB) within gallery section of my website. Here are some links:

http://www.scout-images.com/?page_id=43&g2_itemId=4090 some pics I took of a Sony A350 inside my light tent, D300 AWB

http://www.scout-images.com/?page_id=43&g2_itemId=561 some pics of my Wolf Eyes Defender 260, D300 AWB

http://www.scout-images.com/?page_id=43&g2_itemId=4080 a pic of my SanDisk Extreme Ducati 4gb CF, D300 AWB in light tent I think

I will have to pull the macro out and do some RED work with the D300 and the S5 Pro and post them soon though.

[colin_12]

Nothing like the ol macro Gerry.
I really like #1 and #4. The water droplets are great.

[biggerry]

Nothing like the ol macro Gerry.
I really like #1 and #4. The water droplets are great.

thanks colin, still hunting for that 105mm number though!