After visiting the Philadelphia Flower Show on Tuesday and getting some beautiful roses for a steal (25 for $9.95) I decided to try to get one of those dramatic shot of a rose with a black background. I hung a black cloth and placed a single rose on our bar directly underneath a small halogen spotlight (my new favorite place for shooting indoor still lifes). I put my camera on Aperture Priority, no flash, and took a few photos. This first photo is what I got:
Not exactly what I was aiming for AT ALL! Looks like a ball of cotton still on the plant - no, even that would have more contrast and definition! And, I don't like that I can see the wrinkles in my black fabric background. Do I need to get the iron out? Hmmm...
I just got my Nikon D90 in November, and I know it is a good camera, so there must be something I can do to get a better shot of this rose. So, I decided to play around with some of the settings that I haven't touched yet, namely the metering.
So, I changed the metering from the default of Matrix or Pattern metering to spot metering... a new frontier for me. I took another shot and it came out a bit better (second photo).
It has a little bit of petal detail, but I'm not going to win any photo contests with this. Heck, I'm still not going get a print or even show it to anyone, but I'm heading in the right direction.
Now, what else can I do? Oh, maybe I'll try tinkering with the Exposure Compensation... I never did that either... I know where the button is, and that I need to press and hold it down while rotating one of the two dials. Okay, let's see...
I continued to use the spot metering and set the EV at -0.7.
Now it was starting to look more like I envisioned. Okay, let's see what happens if I reduce the exposure even more... this is fun now instead of frustrating!
This shot was taken with the Exposure set at -1.7. Now I can really see some petals...Oh, I can see a little something on the left edge too. I'll have to crop this one if I decide to use it for anything. I didn't do any post-processing on any of these shots in this blog entry, since I merely wanted to document what changes in the metering and exposure did straight out of my camera.
Now, I think I'll try one more... let's get crazy and really decrease the exposure...
This final photo I took using an Exposure Value of -3.0. It may be a bit too dark for some, but I like it. I like the way the stem fades into darkness. Very dramatic. It reminds me of those great covers on the Twilight series books.
So, I learned today that the best way to learn is to play. Now I have to get some WORK done... Darn!
