Day Lilly II
Posted: July 27, 2009
Filed under: Floral
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Description
This is a photograph of a Yellow Day Lily, or Lemon Lily, which is actually an escaped Asiatic species of lily. I took this shot using my Sigma 70-300mm apochromatic zoom lens at nearly full zoom from roughly a foot and half away with my Nikon 6T close-up lens (which also contains additional apochromatic elements within) attached at f/8 and a shutter speed of 1/125 on Kodak Elitechrome 100 ISO slide film.
This photograph sheds light on an interesting and common predicament that arises when shooting impromptu, improvised floral photography on slow speed film at handheld shutter speeds. Normally, the best way to ensure rich, vital colours in a flower photograph is to use a polarizing filter, angled (by using the small white dot on the outer ring) to ninety degrees from the sun. This will eliminate the scattered light inherent in any daytime exposure reading, allowing your camera to take a reading only from the now directed light rays emanating from the flower. However, utilizing this filter will result in a two-stop decrease in your exposure. Normally, to use handheld shutter speeds on slow speed film, one must use a fairly open aperture, such as f/5.6, perhaps f/8 if one is in brighter conditions of more direct sunlight, as I was for this photograph. Pushing the lens to it’s widest aperture, f/4, can result in some vignetting (though this may happen anyways, pushing the lens to either extreme of aperture will consequently multiply this effect, for better or for worse); and, since some depth is usually better for the composition, it is best not to go past f/5.6, and f/8 is better, f/11 or f/16 being optimal. These apertures can easily be achieved with the use of a tripod, but, as mentioned above, we are dealing with impromptu handheld situations. Since macro photography can require quite a long focal length, lens shake is amplified at any focal length past and including 200mm, so one should not use a shutter speed of anything less than 1/60, though even this speed can be dangerous and bracketing should always be practised at this speed. The other thing one should know about flower photography is that flowers in the shade will have a more enriched volume to their colours than those caught in direct sunlight, furthering the problem of keeping the shutter speed at or above 1/60, and the aperture at or below f/5.6. So, what is one to do?
A polarizing filter is no longer required when dealing with flowers in the shade. Here, so long as my subject is within a one and a half stop difference in exposure from what the camera is telling me, than I will still go for the shot. For example, let us say my Nikon FM2 is telling me that the correct exposure level for the flower is a shutter speed of 1/30 and an aperture of one-third of a stop below f/4. At this point, I will still use a 1/60 shutter speed and an f/5.6 aperture and will be confident in a good resulting photograph. Be warned, there will be times when handheld speeds are simply impossible in the shade, and to be truly prepared is to carry a tripod with you at all times.
But what about dragging down the bleaching effect of sunlight without a polarizing filter while remaining in the handheld exposure range? Although this foregoing strategy is not as ideal as the actual filter, it is a handy trick to have in mind. To mimic the effect of the polarizing filter, drop your exposure down by two-stops when taking a flower photograph in direct sunlight. Usually, the best way to do this is to drop one stop from your aperture, and one stop from your shutter speed. Such is the technique I used in order to capture this photograph. But, practice with your camera. Perhaps a two and a half stop decrease is more ideally suited for the sensors in your camera, perhaps more, perhaps less. Record your settings during your outings, and learn what effects come from differing exposure settings when bracketing for shots. With time, you will come to do this in your mind automatically, as your hippocampi, short-term memory systems, and cerebellum consolidate these thought processes and actions into long-term memory, and then beyond the beaches of conscious attention and into the shadowed waters of the unconscious, until such things become like breathing. If you love the art of photography, it will be much easier for you to achieve this, as the mind record and remembers information that pertains to itself much easier than it does anything else; thus, if your passion is photography, then any information dealing with it is pertinent to you, and so will be remembered more easily.
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