Metering Question on Macro Flower Shots

I hope someone will be able to assist me with a problem I seem to be
having with metering. I've been doing photographer for a long while,
but have only recently ventured into the realm of macro nature shots;
specifically, flowers. Our public rose garden where I live is quite
nice, and we're down south, so the flowers look great even this late
in the year.

I've been trying to photograph these roses using some macro equipment
I've put together over the years - a Canon T60 SLR (FD-mount, manual
or aperture-priority automatic), a Vivitar Series 1 90mm f2.5 with a
Vivitar 2X Macro Focusing Teleconverter. I have the matched macro for
the Series 1, but I like this 2X focusing teleconverter very much. I
am using Kodak UC 400 color print film and scanning with a Minolta
Scan Dual IV at the highest resolution using Vuescan under Linux. I
edit my scans with The Gimp 2.0.

I've been having reasonable results for a beginner, with the single
exception of white roses, which I seem to keep blowing out. I am
using both manual metering and the T60's TTL metering - both agree
after I take the 2X multiplier into account. I'm shooting at f8 @
1/125 on a sunny day, which seems pretty reasonable given the 2X
multiplier and the 400 speed film. I'm not sure what else I could
have done here, except to bracket like crazy. But I'm just learning, I
hope not to have to bracket forever, and get a feel for what I should
be doing with the exposure here. I used C41, I thought the film's
latitude would have saved me, but alas, it did not. I guess slide
film would have been even worse!

I am enclosing a link to this mistake in jpeg format. I've done
nothing to it in The Gimp except to convert it from TIF format and
save. I also saved a resized version for anyone who doesn't want to
see the original monster file.

I would appreciate any advice anyone could give me - not just on this
specific shot, but in general - white flowers, how to avoid messing up
the metering?

Thanks!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

http://www.growlery.com/blown_out_rose_big.jpg

http://www.growlery.com/blown_out_rose_small.jpg

I really don't think your white rose is blown out. You can still see some
detail in the flower ie. the veins. Are you sure your camera is TTL and the
flash is dedicated to the camera? If this is so I would take the flash off
the camera and use a dedicated cord to go from the flash to the camera.
Hold the flash about even with the front of the lens shoot that way. If the
white flower still comes out "blown out" fool the camera if it is not DX
and set the ISO to 800 This should give you one stop under exposed

--


----------------------------------------------------
This mailbox protected from junk email by MailFrontier Desktop
from MailFrontier, Inc. http://info.mailfrontier.com

"The Bill Mattocks" wrote in message
om...
I hope someone will be able to assist me with a problem I seem to be
having with metering. I've been doing photographer for a long while,
but have only recently ventured into the realm of macro nature shots;
specifically, flowers. Our public rose garden where I live is quite
nice, and we're down south, so the flowers look great even this late
in the year.

I've been trying to photograph these roses using some macro equipment
I've put together over the years - a Canon T60 SLR (FD-mount, manual
or aperture-priority automatic), a Vivitar Series 1 90mm f2.5 with a
Vivitar 2X Macro Focusing Teleconverter. I have the matched macro for
the Series 1, but I like this 2X focusing teleconverter very much. I
am using Kodak UC 400 color print film and scanning with a Minolta
Scan Dual IV at the highest resolution using Vuescan under Linux. I
edit my scans with The Gimp 2.0.

I've been having reasonable results for a beginner, with the single
exception of white roses, which I seem to keep blowing out. I am
using both manual metering and the T60's TTL metering - both agree
after I take the 2X multiplier into account. I'm shooting at f8 @
1/125 on a sunny day, which seems pretty reasonable given the 2X
multiplier and the 400 speed film. I'm not sure what else I could
have done here, except to bracket like crazy. But I'm just learning, I
hope not to have to bracket forever, and get a feel for what I should
be doing with the exposure here. I used C41, I thought the film's
latitude would have saved me, but alas, it did not. I guess slide
film would have been even worse!

I am enclosing a link to this mistake in jpeg format. I've done
nothing to it in The Gimp except to convert it from TIF format and
save. I also saved a resized version for anyone who doesn't want to
see the original monster file.

I would appreciate any advice anyone could give me - not just on this
specific shot, but in general - white flowers, how to avoid messing up
the metering?

Thanks!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

http://www.growlery.com/blown_out_rose_big.jpg

http://www.growlery.com/blown_out_rose_small.jpg

I really don't think your white rose is blown out. You can still see some
detail in the flower ie. the veins. Are you sure your camera is TTL and the
flash is dedicated to the camera? If this is so I would take the flash off
the camera and use a dedicated cord to go from the flash to the camera.
Hold the flash about even with the front of the lens shoot that way. If the
white flower still comes out "blown out" fool the camera if it is not DX
and set the ISO to 800 This should give you one stop under exposed

--


----------------------------------------------------
This mailbox protected from junk email by MailFrontier Desktop
from MailFrontier, Inc. http://info.mailfrontier.com

"The Bill Mattocks" wrote in message
om...
I hope someone will be able to assist me with a problem I seem to be
having with metering. I've been doing photographer for a long while,
but have only recently ventured into the realm of macro nature shots;
specifically, flowers. Our public rose garden where I live is quite
nice, and we're down south, so the flowers look great even this late
in the year.

I've been trying to photograph these roses using some macro equipment
I've put together over the years - a Canon T60 SLR (FD-mount, manual
or aperture-priority automatic), a Vivitar Series 1 90mm f2.5 with a
Vivitar 2X Macro Focusing Teleconverter. I have the matched macro for
the Series 1, but I like this 2X focusing teleconverter very much. I
am using Kodak UC 400 color print film and scanning with a Minolta
Scan Dual IV at the highest resolution using Vuescan under Linux. I
edit my scans with The Gimp 2.0.

I've been having reasonable results for a beginner, with the single
exception of white roses, which I seem to keep blowing out. I am
using both manual metering and the T60's TTL metering - both agree
after I take the 2X multiplier into account. I'm shooting at f8 @
1/125 on a sunny day, which seems pretty reasonable given the 2X
multiplier and the 400 speed film. I'm not sure what else I could
have done here, except to bracket like crazy. But I'm just learning, I
hope not to have to bracket forever, and get a feel for what I should
be doing with the exposure here. I used C41, I thought the film's
latitude would have saved me, but alas, it did not. I guess slide
film would have been even worse!

I am enclosing a link to this mistake in jpeg format. I've done
nothing to it in The Gimp except to convert it from TIF format and
save. I also saved a resized version for anyone who doesn't want to
see the original monster file.

I would appreciate any advice anyone could give me - not just on this
specific shot, but in general - white flowers, how to avoid messing up
the metering?

Thanks!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

http://www.growlery.com/blown_out_rose_big.jpg

http://www.growlery.com/blown_out_rose_small.jpg

I haven't looked at the photo- but since you are using print film, what you are
getting isn't necessarily exactly what you shot. Try using slide film, which
would show you if the mistake is in your exposure or not.

Don't forget- someone (or a machine running on automatic) printed that picture-
the negative could be perfectly exposed but the printing could still be off.

Try taking the negative back to the lab and have them print it a little darker
and see if that helps.

Dukephoto

I haven't looked at the photo- but since you are using print film, what you are
getting isn't necessarily exactly what you shot. Try using slide film, which
would show you if the mistake is in your exposure or not.

Don't forget- someone (or a machine running on automatic) printed that picture-
the negative could be perfectly exposed but the printing could still be off.

Try taking the negative back to the lab and have them print it a little darker
and see if that helps.

Dukephoto

(MDCORE) wrote in message ...
I haven't looked at the photo- but since you are using print film, what you are
getting isn't necessarily exactly what you shot. Try using slide film, which
would show you if the mistake is in your exposure or not.

Don't forget- someone (or a machine running on automatic) printed that picture-
the negative could be perfectly exposed but the printing could still be off.

Try taking the negative back to the lab and have them print it a little darker
and see if that helps.

Dukephoto

My fault - I should have been more clear in my initial message. I did
not print this photo - I scanned the negative, which I had developed
without printing to avoid scratching it. Scanned with Minolta Dimage
Scan Dual IV, Vuescan, photo changed from TIF to JPG (for posting
online) in The Gimp 2.0 under Linux. There is no print, hence no
problem with the print.

I understand your comment about slide film showing me definitively if
the problem is in my exposure - but since it has less latitude than
color print film, I suspect that the delta between the green foliage
and the white flower petals is going to exceed that range no matter
what I do in the way of exposure, and would leave me even more
confused about what to do to get a better exposure.

I appreciate your response, sorry to have confused you.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

(MDCORE) wrote in message ...
I haven't looked at the photo- but since you are using print film, what you are
getting isn't necessarily exactly what you shot. Try using slide film, which
would show you if the mistake is in your exposure or not.

Don't forget- someone (or a machine running on automatic) printed that picture-
the negative could be perfectly exposed but the printing could still be off.

Try taking the negative back to the lab and have them print it a little darker
and see if that helps.

Dukephoto

My fault - I should have been more clear in my initial message. I did
not print this photo - I scanned the negative, which I had developed
without printing to avoid scratching it. Scanned with Minolta Dimage
Scan Dual IV, Vuescan, photo changed from TIF to JPG (for posting
online) in The Gimp 2.0 under Linux. There is no print, hence no
problem with the print.

I understand your comment about slide film showing me definitively if
the problem is in my exposure - but since it has less latitude than
color print film, I suspect that the delta between the green foliage
and the white flower petals is going to exceed that range no matter
what I do in the way of exposure, and would leave me even more
confused about what to do to get a better exposure.

I appreciate your response, sorry to have confused you.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

It looks like the sun must be right behind your back. Try to take pictures
with the flower backlit and you'll probably have more success. It looks to
me like there is quite a bit of detail in your pic. I don't think your
exposure is way off. Less would be better but maybe your monitor is making
it appear worse.
-jeff

"The Bill Mattocks" wrote in message
I think the rose is 'not quite entirely' blown out, the edges do hold
some detail, but the rose petals in the center sure seem blown out to
me - is it my eyes? (grin)


Do you think if I had underexposed one stop that might have saved this
one? Was I that close to having it right? I thought I was WAY off.

Bill Mattocks

"Jeff Keller" wrote in message ...
It looks like the sun must be right behind your back. Try to take pictures
with the flower backlit and you'll probably have more success. It looks to
me like there is quite a bit of detail in your pic. I don't think your
exposure is way off. Less would be better but maybe your monitor is making
it appear worse.
-jeff

Ah, I didn't think of that! It might be my monitor. OK, I'll look
into that! And I appreciate the advice about having the flower
backlit in the future - I'll try that and see what I get.

Thanks very much!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

"Jeff Keller" wrote in message ...
It looks like the sun must be right behind your back. Try to take pictures
with the flower backlit and you'll probably have more success. It looks to
me like there is quite a bit of detail in your pic. I don't think your
exposure is way off. Less would be better but maybe your monitor is making
it appear worse.
-jeff

Ah, I didn't think of that! It might be my monitor. OK, I'll look
into that! And I appreciate the advice about having the flower
backlit in the future - I'll try that and see what I get.

Thanks very much!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks