Stuff
I left my home at 3:15pm on Friday afternoon and made it to just below Savannah, GA by 9:30 where I grabbed a cheap motel room and hit the sack. I awoke ten minutes before the alarm at 5:20 and was headed to Charleston by 5:45. I met Denise Ippolto and her friend Pam Cohen at denise’s hotel and we headed out to do some scouting.
This blog post, the 129th in a row took about 1 1/2 hours to prepare. It was published automatically at 4:00am on Sunday morning.
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This image was created at a cemetery in North Charleston, SC with the tripod-mounted Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens (at 340mm) and the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2/3 stop: 1/500 sec. at f/8 was a small under-exposure. Center AF point/AI Servo Surround/Rear Focus AF on the edge where the un-opened carpels meet the opened carpels and re-compose. Click here to see the latest version of the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version. Magnolia, fresh blossom |
Canon 100-400mm L IS II/7D Mark II Versatility; Part 8: Charleston’s Iconic Flower
Magnolia is a large, ancient genus of flowering plants that appeared before bees did. Many are pollinated by beetles thus the carpels are extremely tough. The genus was named after the French botanist, Pierre Mangol. If anyone knows how to pronounce that name, please let us know. A web search on the came up empty. Magnolias are closely associated with all southern US states, not just South Carolina, but they sure are prolific around Charleston.
Thanks to Denise Ippolito for finding the perfect down low blossom. In the shade no less.
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Typos
In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right :).
Art, thanks for always showing how powerful and flexable the 7d mkII is. You have cured me of 1d x fever. Can’t wait to buy this camera and the 100-400 v2
Thanks Artie,
Been trying to understand this for several weeks now.
How you can meter off the bright sky and add 2 or 3 stops.
I learned a different method for getting proper exposure, but I pretty much do the test exposure, check histogram, method you teach now.
Understanding exposure also requires a good working knowledge of how the various metering modes work on the camera.
As always
D
I checked with a French speaker and he pronounced Pierre Magnol as “mahn-yol”.
Beautiful magnolia blossom in glorious shades of whites and elegant curves. You have inspired me to look for the low hanging flowers now that I live in Arkansas where the trees are also abundant.
Hi Artie,
Nice detail in the flower centre.
Lots of whites in yesterday’s and today’s images.
Exposure question.
In a situation where you have mostly white or light tones you often seem to add a fair bit of extra exposure .
The other day I think you commented that you added maybe 2 stops and still hade no blown highlights ” Rgb values in the 240 s”
Is the reason you can do this because the camera meter wants to bring the average expoosure to middle Gray..?
Thus you have about 4 to 5 stops dynamic range above and 2 or 3 below this value to play with. Does This headroom mean you can shift
the exposure to the right to get more data in the 5 th histogram box without losing detail in the highlights.?
As always
Safe travels
D
Hey David,
You pretty much have a good understanding of everything above. I do not think in terms of dynamic range….
Here is one of the main concepts: when the sun is not out at full strength and the scene averages to well lighter than a middle tone, the meter is really stupid; you need to be the smart one.
Hey Dave, Do a search in the little white box top right for Working in Manual mode. I just point the lens at the sky, set an aperture–usually wide open or 1/3 stop down, and then adjust the shutter speed so that the analog scale shows +2 or + 3 as needed. Then make an image and check the histogram. artie
Thanks Artie, I did the search. Very helpful still some reading to finish.
Regards
David