Camellia

[johntorcasio]

Camellia Plant in Melbourne City

[Isac]

Beautiful large flower John. The sun has proven to be your enemy with this one though. When you photograph red flowers in daylight sun, there's a good chance the red channel will clip.

Next time, try these tips.
1. Use something to shade the sun from the flower. Piece of cardboard or even a collapsible mini light reflector - just folds up really small. Red flowers are extremely reflective.
2. Dial down the exposure. Don't worry about the surrounding leaves etc being too dark, post can bring them up later.
3. For the camera: Manual, 1/250th - up to /1250 (depends on the wind), f5.6 / f8, Auto ISO, SPOT Metering (can be Evaluative), Daylight White Balance. Always shoot RAW.

This is a starting point only but should yield better results.
Finally, set your camera's playback information display, to show the RGB Histogram so you can check for the red channel clipping.
Here's a sample: For this one I switched back to auto ISO because the flower was shaded.

[johntorcasio]

Thank you, for your critique Isac

[Isac]

You're welcome. It always comes with a positive tone and is a guide only because we all see things differently

[wigz]

Nice and sharp with good detail John, but as Isac mentioned, the bright highlights are overexposed, losing colour and detail, and making a rather contrasty image.

[David_MC]

Isac made a good point on viewing the RGB histogram. Reds overexpose very easily and can look muddy. The composition you have is really nice.

[dolina]

Lovely flow

[avkomp]

nice image.
as pointed out about the hot stuff.
digital cameras seem to have a tendency to blow out reds first very often. maybe yellows a close 2nd.
I like Johns suggestion for screening the light. the reflector idea is a good one,
but from my experience, in harsh light, a scrim can yield better results.
what is a scrim I hear you asking. well is sort of like shade cloth but translucent, and a lot of reflectors you can buy have multifunction in them, including the ebay ones etc
the 3ft one I have is an ebay one and has multi functions which are from memory: silver, gold, black, white and translucent (scrim) you might see sports illustrated models being shot in bright sun at the beach and if you get a behind the scene look, a guy or 2 holding a somewhat larger thing like this.
blocking the sun with cardboard etc works but you can lose some light on the subject, toning it down works well if you are that way inclined.
or shoot in full overcast where natures' big softbox does it for you