I'm very new to photography and I've just received a canon 20d for Christmas. I've been shooting with a 5mp Sony and the dSLR is very new to me. Prior to receiving the 20d I was experimenting with shooting flowers on colored backgrounds and I've had some success. I've had problems with photographing flowers on a black background because the flash seems to show up and even backing the flowers with black velvet still doesn’t seem to help. I tried setting it to a higher aperture and underexposing it. Is that a good approach? Can I have some help?
You can try putting the background farther back and angling it, try to keep as much other light off the background also. Once its comes out close enough that it can be easily selected in photoshop you can finish it up there.
I suggest using felt fabric for your black backgrounds...it absorbs an ungodly amount of light from flash or direct light like I do....its also pretty cheap...goto Joann Fabrics and take some test shots with some different fabrics...i ended up picking up some imitation felt that was 1/3 the cost of real felt and gave a MUCH better background....here are two examples for you...i had 3 1000watt halogen lamps on these flowers and you can see the background performed well.
