# Plant Life, up close and personal



## OldManJim (Sep 21, 2017)

Here are some shots I took while fooling around with a 50 mm f1.4D lens reversed on a Nikon D3200. DOF seems pretty good on the first, but not on the second.


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## Steven Dillon (Sep 21, 2017)

There appears to be some color and/or noise issues going on.  Do you process on a calibrated monitor?  If so, the color banding areas can be caused by several things (e.g. pushing the RGB channels too far to the right and blowing them, converting to SRGB from ProPhoto, etc.).


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## jcdeboever (Sep 21, 2017)

Not sure of your settings. Just assuming. Spot meter flowers. If your using flash, bring it down in power for fill only. Make sure to use standard color profile and not vivid or dial it down a little. May have went to far with saturation and or vibrance in post. I prefer to get it as close to right in camera first, then go from there.


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## OldManJim (Sep 22, 2017)

I was so busy just trying to get the lighting and focus correct with the reversed lens, I forgot to check the camera settings. They were on "Vivid" which accounts for some of the problems.

I don't have a calibrated monitor - that's my next step. Any recommendations on monitor calibration software? I've looked at ColorSpyder 2? but have no experience in this area. Any recommendations will be greatly appreciated.


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## Steven Dillon (Sep 22, 2017)

OldManJim said:


> I was so busy just trying to get the lighting and focus correct with the reversed lens, I forgot to check the camera settings. They were on "Vivid" which accounts for some of the problems.
> 
> I don't have a calibrated monitor - that's my next step. Any recommendations on monitor calibration software? I've looked at ColorSpyder 2? but have no experience in this area. Any recommendations will be greatly appreciated.



I use Eizo monitors so the software is ColorNavigator.  Not sure it would work with other hardware devices, but it might.


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## snowbear (Sep 23, 2017)

I went with the Spyder (Spyder 5 Pro software).


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## Light Guru (Sep 23, 2017)

The lighting is really bad. Too much and too hard. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Steven Dillon (Sep 25, 2017)

snowbear said:


> I went with the Spyder (Spyder 5 Pro software).


I used to use a Spyder 3, but they didn't update their software, and I couldn't load/use it on later operating systems.  :-(  Should be much better than not using any calibration.


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## OldManJim (Oct 14, 2017)

Well, I just bought ColorSpyder5, we'll see how that works out. Still need to work on the lighting.


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## OldManJim (Oct 26, 2017)

Got the ColorSpyder 5 & calibrated the monitor with it. Seems to add a light tan bias to the display. Now, on to the lighting issue. Always a work in process.......


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