Capturing True RED with Digital Camera

19 years ago

As many of us know capturing a true representation of RED amaryllis is difficult. I thought maybe we could discuss this topic here and all benefit from the experience of others.

I am by no means an expert at photography. In fact I just started last year trying to get some good shots of Amaryllis in their natural lighting. Over the past couple of years I've purchased three, not too expensive, cameras mostly to take pictures of flowers and birds (and the jungle and spider monkeys when I go visit my friend at her sanctioned rescue preserve).

Yesterday, at a small gathering, I was able to "corral" one of my professional photographer neighbors to ask some questions. He was very enthusiastic about giving me some instructions. The information was not so much over my head as it was can my cameras do that.

So for getting good, true reds with as little tinkering as possible of camera, lighting, and digital photo, He, Dan, said, "Oh boy, now you asked." and went on to "discuss" this for a lengthy time. For simplicity it boils down to "white balance" on the camera. Those fortunate enough to have a camera where you can adjust the white balance experimenting with that and a white board to calibrate it is the simiplest way. I won't fully understand everything he told me until I get a white board and play around a bit.

Dan did start with basics including ambient lighting and how that affects colors. I think many of us have discovered this but what to do?

He suggested that I bring some of the plants down to his house and he could show me in no time how to get "true" colors but that is going to be really hard right now as the Amaryllis are so "delicate" when they are in full bloom. Perhaps when a few more REDS open I can cut a few to carry down there.

At any rate, guys, please report in on what you do or don't do, and everyone please ask questions to help stimulate discussions.

Thanks, geekgranny=alice

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Comments (5)

hairy3
19 years ago
Hi alice.
I have real problems getting the colour right, Ive got some really nice red blooms, which Ive taken pics of and they have always not captured the real reddness of the flower. Any tips from your fiend would be very helpful. I did however manage to get a good pic of a red bloom, the light wasnt brilliant and I placed the plant in front of a white wall. This seemed to do the trick, the reult was not brilliant, bit it captured the colour just right, wish I hadnt deleted it now !!
Keep us informed
hairy3
palmcoastgarden
19 years ago
That is a very interesting idea: photographing against a white background to get better reds. I am going to try that myself and see if it helps.
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patwood
19 years ago
White balance and ambient lighting go hand in hand. Our eyes adjust to lots of varying light conditions, but you can notice the problem if you go from a room lighted with florescent to incandescent lights, or from "daylight" florescent to incandescent bulbs, at least for a few seconds before your eyes and brain adjust.

White balance is simply the process of telling your camera what kind of lighting you're using. By pointing your camera at a white area and telling it "this is white", you're giving the computer in your camera an indication of the spectral qualities (i.e., relative proportion of red, green, and blue) of the ambient lighting.

Just be glad that you can do this (well, some digcams allow you to do this, some attempt to adjust automagically). In the olden days of film, you either had to buy film specifically designed for a certain type of lighting, use filters, or play darkroom games (automated film processing systems in the 90's started to do a lot of the same adjustments that are currently done in digicams).
geekgranny
Original Author
19 years ago
Thanks all and patwood, great info in a few short words. Dan did go into many areas. He did bring up calibration of monitors but I told him that that was not the main issue.

Back when I was scanning in film photos, for my doggie ads, I calibrated my monitor, scanner and printers using color cards. I don't find that as much needed now days (mainly because I don't need the colors "that" true and there seems to be many more settings (small files to instruct devices) that help so much in that area. In addition I do think newer monitors, scanners, printers are just plain better at giving truer colors.)

Because my friends "photos" are going to print in magazines all of the calibration is necessary for him. The digital files he sends for publishing include all the calibration info needed. It's a great program that does it automatically for him. In addition he does need more calibration for his web page.

In our case so many people have so many different monitors and display cards too much tinkering on originating end probably wouldn't do any good. Also, in relation to REDS, it seems to be a universal problem for most of us just capturing them to begin with.

I haven't had time to "play" yet but I have dragged in several REDS to the dining room to shoot them together and/or play with white balance.

One of the best pieces of advice that Dan gave me was to get out the manuals for my cameras and research them thoroughly.

geekgranny=alice
soultan
19 years ago
White balancing means that you hold up a clear white sheet of paper or material in front of your subject (flower) and push the white balance button on your machine, to make sure that it creates a color scheme based on a clear white object in the area. Then you take the white sheet away and can conduct your photograpy. So it is not pivotal to use a white background or leave the white sheet in the picture... White balancing is to balance the camera to show the colors based on the true white presented to it in the given environment.