Color to Match
Posted on | January 11, 2010 | No Comments
Linda placed some poinsettias around the house for the holidays. One sunny but cold day, I decided to shoot some of the plants in order to keep cabin fever at bay. Three of the best plants were in the sunroom backlit with the early morning light. I set up the 70-200 zoom and clicked off a few exposures. I was not happy with the images on the camera’s LCD screen. I downloaded the images to the computer (a great advantage in shooting at home) to inspect the first images. My initial impressions were correct. The captures were not good enough to add to the image library.
The backlighting worked against me. The reds were so strong they overpowered the images. I added a diffuser to soften the light and decrease some of the contrast. Still not good enough. I decided to wait a few hours for the sun to move to see if sidelighting was better. In addition, a reflector placed opposite the diffuser further reduced the contrast. Changing the lens to a 180mm macro completed the afternoon set up.
The image in the viewfinder for the afternoon shoot looked much better. I downloaded and selected a number of the horizontal and vertical images. These images were more in line with what I hoped to capture. When I increased the images on the monitor to 100% however, detail in the red bracts was missing. The new plants are so color saturated that it caused clipping in the red channel. I lowered the saturation in the red channel (Lightroom 2 develop module) until detail showed. It didn’t take much, maybe -15 red, for the detail to show. One of the finished images from the series starts this post.
Some plants, especially the newer introductions, have such intense coloration that it may be impossible for the current monitors and printers to accurately match it. Make sure your monitor is calibrated and optimize your images for the best combination of saturation, exposure, detail etc. If you are shooting RAW, be patient. New monitors, printers ink or software may make it possible for us to go back to an old RAW file and reprocess it for a better match.
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