Help for photographing very dark flowers

[Hedge]

Hi
I have a Colmanara Masai Red in flower at the moment which has extremely dark red flowers with arich rich maroon lip. I am not very experienced at taking pictures of such flowers at this time of year when natural light is poor. Flash just makes the flowers look blacker. In actual fact , with light behind them they are not a solid colour at all.

I have a Fuji Pics S5700 which has macro facility and various flash options. Also I have reflected light from snow at the moment to cope with when the plant is in the window. Taking it outside to photgraph is NOT currently an option!!!!

All tips and hints would be welcomed. I do have a flash gun somewhere that I could manually fire if you think extra light from an angle eg bounce off a white ceiling would help, although coordinating it might be fun!

this is a link to a retailer's image of what I'm trying to achieve:
Colmanara 'Masai Red' - FS

[dendro photo]

You will need to play with the light metering. i would set it to center and play with some continues light such as a small led pen light just on the flower. all else fails do some post prossesing. hope this helps

[RosieC]

I don't know what settings your Camera has, and I'm not an export, only using a compact, but with my compact Cannon Powershot I would use light metering options as Bryan suggests. Basically you tell it that it should only measure light levels at the center of the frame, rather than the average all over the picture, it can have really dramatic results in how dark flowers show up.

[Ray]

There are folks here that are far better photographers than I. Hopefully they'll chime in, but here's some of the tricks I do:

As you noted, bright, indirect/diffuse light is the key. Try putting one or more layers of waxed paper over the on-camera flash to diffuse the light, and add the second flash. Bouncing that off of the ceiling or passing it through another diffuser (white sheet?) should help. I have an "Omnibounce" for my hot shoe flash, but often just hold a translucent plastic cup in front of the built-in one, if I'm only taking a single shot of something.

If you put the plant in front of a dark background (velvet is best, as it "absorbs" shadows), all of the metering will be off of the flowers.

[Hedge]

Thanks for all the advice, I'll have a go when I've decorated the tree tomorrow!

[Hedge]

I have struck lucky ! The other day at 11.05 GMT the sun shone through the east facing window at just the right angle to give me the following result. By 11.10 GMT, it had clouded over and then the angle was lost as the sun went round the house. So, here it is: Colmanara 'Masai Red',photographed using entirely natural lighting with central metering. Thanks for all your hints!

[RosieC]

That looks good Hedge, glad you found the right momment.

[Connie Star]

Very lovely!

[ronaldhanko]

The advice you've been given is spot on - especially the advice about setting your metering so that it measures the light on the dark parts of the flower and sets the exposure accordingly.

[Hedge]

Thanks Rosie, Connie and Ron, and Happy Christmas to you all