The plant is a beauty. The pic is great too. Well focused ant the composition is terrific. It is, however overexposed and there are a few hot spots.
The hot spots (the washed out round white spots on the pouch) are caused by the flash. To eliminate these you need to ditch the flash, or not have it flash directly on the plant.
The overexposure is caused by the camera being tricked by the black background. When the camera meter reads the scene it "averages" the amount of light. Because a lot of the scene is black, it causes the camera to overexpose the lighter parts. To avoid this, you have a couple of options.
The first is too shoot with a tripod and no flash (using the lights you have). You can fool around with where to put the lights. You get even lighting over the flowers (no hot spots). The tripod is needed to steady the camera because you may have long shutter times.
To meter the scene you can get an 18% gray card. It's available at any photo store or on line. Hold that up in front of the scene and read the metering (shutter and f stop) through the camera. Manually set those settings and the photo will be exposed properly.
Another way to meter the flowers is to set your camera on spot metering. Aim the center spot in the viewfinder at a middle tone in the plant. Record the f stop and shutter speed and set them manually.
In all instances shoot one picture at the settings you read, one at one stop above and one at one stop below the recommended settings. It's called bracketing and will compensate for any problems with the metering.
The hot spots (the washed out round white spots on the pouch) are caused by the flash. To eliminate these you need to ditch the flash, or not have it flash directly on the plant.
The overexposure is caused by the camera being tricked by the black background. When the camera meter reads the scene it "averages" the amount of light. Because a lot of the scene is black, it causes the camera to overexpose the lighter parts. To avoid this, you have a couple of options.
The first is too shoot with a tripod and no flash (using the lights you have). You can fool around with where to put the lights. You get even lighting over the flowers (no hot spots). The tripod is needed to steady the camera because you may have long shutter times.
To meter the scene you can get an 18% gray card. It's available at any photo store or on line. Hold that up in front of the scene and read the metering (shutter and f stop) through the camera. Manually set those settings and the photo will be exposed properly.
Another way to meter the flowers is to set your camera on spot metering. Aim the center spot in the viewfinder at a middle tone in the plant. Record the f stop and shutter speed and set them manually.
In all instances shoot one picture at the settings you read, one at one stop above and one at one stop below the recommended settings. It's called bracketing and will compensate for any problems with the metering.
