Trichoglottis philippinensis, dark form

[eorchids]

Beautiful flower.

[Dorsetman]

A superb flower . Is it only one ? Why do we see pics in books showing a dozen flowers I wonder ? I have seen similar on vendors stands very occasionally, but the plants were not for sale.


I have a bud on my T.brachiata/phillipinensis or whatever it turns out to be - I have shown it some months ago asking if it were a growth or a bud , and ( in another place) I was very confidently told it was a keiki - but it is clearly a flower bud. Very slow growing , now up to the size of a pea ( say 1/4 inch diameter) ; at the presnt rate it will not be open for another month perhaps, so I hope to be able to show a pic when I am back home at the end of this month.

[Jef09071984]

have seen it (the pic at last) hehehe

wally, you would'nt mind if i save a copy as i like it to be a wallpaper of my gadget.

thanks. :-)

[mr. suarez]

Maura, wow, three hours? And I thought I was patient enough!

For these shots, I used an old Fujifilm S5600 (odd brand name for a camera that doesn't use film) with the aperture set at 13.6 and the shutter speed at at very slow 3 seconds, at ISO 64; the lower the ISO, the sharper the image because 'noise' is practically eliminated. I used natural light, and of course I used a tripod and employed a timer.

When available light is diffused (such as in the morning), I would hold a small lamp as supplementary light source, but am careful not to let the light cast heavy shadows (the hand-held lamp should be about 8 inches away from the subject, or until I get a good reading from the light meter).

A trick I have been using for more than a year now is to use both natural light AND flash. This produces sharp images that darkens the background even more, but without the harsh shadows and unnatural saturation. I have found that different cameras produce varying results, so you have to tweak until you get it right. Just remember to set an open aperture and a very slow shutter speed; the light meter should tell you that your shot is very under-exposed. A disadvantage when using this technique though is that a slight breeze will ruin your shot. Your three hours might even extend to four

Geoff, it's actually not the plant's blooming season so for two months I've been getting one to two blooms at a time. When your tricho opens up, I'd like to see a photo or two so we can identify your plant

Jeff, be my guest!

[mauraec]

Maura, wow, three hours? And I thought I was patient enough!

For these shots, I used an old Fujifilm S5600 (odd brand name for a camera that doesn't use film) with the aperture set at 13.6 and the shutter speed at at very slow 3 seconds, at ISO 64; the lower the ISO, the sharper the image because 'noise' is practically eliminated. I used natural light, and of course I used a tripod and employed a timer.

When available light is diffused (such as in the morning), I would hold a small lamp as supplementary light source, but am careful not to let the light cast heavy shadows (the hand-held lamp should be about 8 inches away from the subject, or until I get a good reading from the light meter).

A trick I have been using for more than a year now is to use both natural light AND flash. This produces sharp images that darkens the background even more, but without the harsh shadows and unnatural saturation. I have found that different cameras produce varying results, so you have to tweak until you get it right. Just remember to set an open aperture and a very slow shutter speed; the light meter should tell you that your shot is very under-exposed. A disadvantage when using this technique though is that a slight breeze will ruin your shot. Your three hours might even extend to four

Wow - thanks, Wally, for all the info! I'm using a Nikon D80 with a DX Nikkor AF-S 18-105mm 1:3.5-5.6G ED lens - Phillip has a 60mm macro, but I haven't used that yet. I've been working on depth-of-field issues, tweaking for the best focus with good bokeh and getting down (or up, depending on how you look at it) to at the lowest around 4.5 - which is a pretty narrow plane. My lens won't focus on anything closer than about a foot or more away (even on manual focus), so, other than using photo-editing to crop for a close-up (which causes loss of sharpness, of course), I usually get a much larger field than I want. And if I'm using an aperture higher than, say, 10, I find every little thing in the frame is in focus, which includes a lot of things I'd rather have blurred out. I'm probably using half these terms wrong, but I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say. I much prefer to shoot in natural light, but, as you noted, that has its own trickiness. And my ISO doesn't go below 100 (which I leave as a default setting), so I'm stuck with that. I can certainly use a much slower shutter speed, although I don't think I've ever gone longer than 30 seconds. I always use a tripod when I can, because I take medication that makes my hands tremble, so even quick shots are out of focus without one. Your idea about the auxiliary light intrigues me - I think I'll try it. I also have a sort of knee-jerk aversion to the flash, so I'll have to try that idea as well. What I still can't figure out is how you get the brilliant white and the rich darker colors at the same time. Do you use a custom white balance?

I'm starting to realize I should have transferred these questions to the Technical Photography section, but it was your actual photo and not general tech advice I was so interested in. I have to shoot a very dark maroon/black Beallara next and I've had a lot of trouble with contrasting magenta-type colors - we'll see how it goes.

Again, thanks for the advice. Would it be okay for me to pm you about some more specific questions as they arise?

Maura

[mr. suarez]

I used to work with a camera that won't focus when it's about 8 inches near to the subject too, and even though the ISO was set at 64, I still lose a lot of sharpness (which of course is a matter of resolution, in many cases) when I crop the photo. So what I did was to use RAW, which jacks up the pixels such that when the photo is converted to JPEG, I get better sharpness than if I were to employ JPEG straight away.

Alternatively, you can avoid shooting small flowers instead because they are the ones who force us to macro all the time

I often cringe when I am about to shoot blooms that are dark and without light-coloured margins, or have white lips, or small, entirely white flowers that have no outstanding ornaments, because if the lighting isn't good enough (or when your flash is too bright), the details will flatten. If you shoot dark flowers outdoors, there's always the possibility that the colours will wash out and a dark flower won't be so dark anymore in the resulting photo. Wishy-washy eh? So what I do is to shoot indoor with a black cloth (or shirt) and use either natural light, or both natural light and flash, and tweak until I get it right.

I still have not figured out how to get satisfactory photos with small, unadorned white flowers as subjects though. If you're familiar with Microsaccus, then I tell you that those flowers are my curse

Yep, you can send me a PM if you have further questions

[mauraec]

I used to work with a camera that won't focus when it's about 8 inches near to the subject too, and even though the ISO was set at 64, I still lose a lot of sharpness (which of course is a matter of resolution, in many cases) when I crop the photo. So what I did was to use RAW, which jacks up the pixels such that when the photo is converted to JPEG, I get better sharpness than if I were to employ JPEG straight away.

Alternatively, you can avoid shooting small flowers instead because they are the ones who force us to macro all the time

I often cringe when I am about to shoot blooms that are dark and without light-coloured margins, or have white lips, or small, entirely white flowers that have no outstanding ornaments, because if the lighting isn't good enough (or when your flash is too bright), the details will flatten. If you shoot dark flowers outdoors, there's always the possibility that the colours will wash out and a dark flower won't be so dark anymore in the resulting photo. Wishy-washy eh? So what I do is to shoot indoor with a black cloth (or shirt) and use either natural light, or both natural light and flash, and tweak until I get it right.

I still have not figured out how to get satisfactory photos with small, unadorned white flowers as subjects though. If you're familiar with Microsaccus, then I tell you that those flowers are my curse

Yep, you can send me a PM if you have further questions

Thank you! sounds as though your thought process is a lot like mine, but your results speak for themselves.

[lanhua]

Maura, it is a very interesting discussion and you are right you have to some technical details of your equipment and photography method
Bokeh, you wont to have a nice bokeh. Bokeh came from Japanese word "boke", which means out of focus or blurred. Boke is just dependent on construction of your lens. Nothing to do with exposure time or aperture. Bokeh is depend on a figure of multi-disc, your aperture is made. Usually lens aperture has 6 or 8th multi-discs. In this case the bokeh looks like hexagon. More enhanced lens have 9 multi-disc. In this case the bokeh looks like a circle.It's all. Unfortunately your lens have 7 multi-discs. So you can't expect to get a best bokeh. Sorry.
Your lens can focus only down to 450 mm, also 2 feets, no closer to the motive you wont to photograph.
ISO. In the analog time, the low ISO sensitivity was very important, because of grain size of the film. ISO 64 was a very good and common to get pictures with out any visible grain. In the digital camera time, it looks total different. On the market, there is almost no camera which can accept ISO 64. The lowest figure is 100. But there is no problem with grain or noisy. You can set up ISO sensivity up to 800 ISO and get very good pictures. The processor on your camera is determining the picture quality. Don't be worry to use high ISO. You can take pictures with out tripod and you are almost independet on wind. Set up time to 1/200 or 1/400 are let your camera adjust the aperture. Is your picture to dark increase ISO sensitivity. Try and error, it's the best way.
If you wont to use flash, switch your camera to manual. Aperture 5,6 time 1/200 and take a picture. Using flash, the back ground become dark, but e.g. flowers become sharp and well exposed.
I hope you can follow my poor English.

[mr. suarez]

Hi Mietek,

You just gave us some very informative details here, and I envy you for having a camera whose ISO settings can be cranked up to 800 without producing grainy results. Mine is a 3 or 4 year-old camera that will begin to show noise the moment I use ISO 400; however its lowest sensitivity is 64, which works wonders for me.

Don't worry about your English, as they are understandable. Believe me, in my case my German is worse than your English

Wally

[cdayinflorida]

Very pretty plant.
The photography discussion is interesting and informative.