Hello,

These are a couple attempts at fine art mushroom photography. Obviously they are nowhere near the mark. I was just wondering if some of you kind folks could give me some tips on doing better in the future. All of them are full frame with the exception of the pink ball fungus which was cropped a bit to get rid of a distracting element I did not notice in the shooting process. All are raws changed to jpegs for the forum. They have been resized for web and then changed to 72dpi for monitor viewing.

All are F/32 taken with a Nikon micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 + Hoyo HMC 52mm UV(0) Filter, adapted to my Canon MK 1dII available light no flash. I must admit flash is my weakness, I really have little clue with flash. I tried to use my flash which I have on an extension cord and filtering through milk carton plastic set to all kinds of reduced output -1/2 all the way to -3 and all looked unnatural, kind of washed out and a bit harsh. The mode I have tried is ETTL along with high speed sinch.

One thing I struggle with is depth of field. For some reason and I always thought this to be true the higher the f stop the more that is in focus. But as you notice the stalks of the mushroom and some of the cap are not in focus. Why is this as I have used f/32? Are there limits should I be moving farther from the subject and using a lower f-stop? I am a little clueless in that department.

I would very much love any and all criticism with the exception of "Just give up".

Thanks!

Can't really give you any tips about flash, especially Canon, as I shoot Nikon and also struggle with flash. One 'rule' I try to follow is that if the subject is gonna fill the frame, centered is okay. Otherwise, I try to leave some room and follow the rule of thirds.

Keep shooting and posting, macro takes lots and lots of practice.

Kenny

I never use a flash for my mushies and I find f11 my favourite aperture.
You could use a higher fstop and maybe set your focus just in-front of the mushies and this might get what you want in re to focus. I use a canon 100mm macro and sometimes just use a silver reflector to brighten the stem and gills.

Just keep practising, it has taken me a while to get some good pics out of my setup

Must say they look pretty good to me- light /colour and DOF seem fine- as commented above I'd work on composition and shooting angles
Brian v.

Look good to me too, maybe try looking for angles where the background will be a little further away or try opening the lens up a little to give a pleasant smooth bokeh to help isolate the mushroom a little more, can make the subject stand out more and give the subject the impression of being sharp even if its not all completely in sharp focus.

Adrian

Adrian Jones wrote:
Look good to me too, maybe try looking for angles where the background will be a little further away or try opening the lens up a little to give a pleasant smooth bokeh to help isolate the mushroom a little more, can make the subject stand out more and give the subject the impression of being sharp even if its not all completely in sharp focus.

Adrian

Sounds good. I find that when I open up, that I get weird blobs on the subject.

That is sort of where my problem lies, I think that I am confused about how close I should be to the subject (since I am using a 55mm macro and the dof is very narrow with this lens) so that I can open up and have the subject be in sharp focus, while having the background pleasantly blurred.

I like your idea, can you post some examples of what your talking about as far as the "sharp even if its not all completely in sharp focus."

Thanks!

they look fine to me

Straight-on portrait type shots of mushrooms are boring. When I was into this I tried to make it more like a close up landscape where the mushroom was shown in the habitat where it was growing. I never used flash, ambient only, though small reflectors are vital to get some light under the cap. I also used a battery-powered 9" x 6" lightbox sometimes because in very dark forests there very often is no light penetrating the trees to reflect. I usually tried to get under the mushroom or at least level with it where the beautiful and delicate gills are. I also didn`t always use a macro lens because the angle of view was too limiting, using instead UWA lenses. Ultra -wides are not just for getting everything in but for getting close. I`ll try to dig some stuff out and post it later. As for depth-of-field issues it may be better to make the mushroom smaller in the frame by increasing the distance you shoot at and then cropping to suit later. Depth of field is a function of image size.

Here are 3 from the vaults.

Budzzlife wrote:
they look fine to me

Appreciate that, but I am looking to do great work. Fine sounds so average or below average.

gardenvalley wrote:
Here are 3 from the vaults.

number 1 does it for me! Good work!

Well here is another attempt. Any better? Thanks for looking.

I've been taking photographs of mushrooms for over 10 years and I tried a lot of different things in this time span.

I'll start by commenting your questions and doubts...

First, I think all advice about composition that was given to you was pretty valid. If you do real close-up work, a centered mushroom will work fine (its own structure will spread well in the image), as said by Kenny, otherwise it's better you try to follow the thirds rule. Also, your first two shots are not leveled, which IMHO do not contribute to a ballanced composition. The closer shots vs. wider shots is just a matter of taste - I strongly disagree with gardenvalley in that matter - and you can watch Taylor F. Lockwood's work and see magnificent straight-on photos of mushrooms without finding them boring (see http://www.taylorlockwood.com).

Regarding aperture, I wouldn't recommend such small f-stop values due to diffraction. When I used APS-C cameras I tried to keep the aperture between f/8 and f/11 (eventually f/13) and only in the extreme need to get more depth of field I dared to go down to f/16. Now I shoot with a 5D and I have no problem using f/16 or close a little more, but f/32 wouldn't be my choice. Also, I don't think you'll need to gather the whole mushroom in focus to get a good picture; you can work with bigger apertures and selectively shoose which parts get in focus and which ones get out of focus. The DoF preview button is immensely useful for this...

If you're getting strange artifacts when using bigger apertures, I guess it may be a lens or camera problem, but it certainly is a strange thing to happen.

Finaly, regarding flash, I understand why many people don't use it - harsh light, unnatural look -, but (pardon my immodesty) I believe it happens because most people can't use flash properly. I always use flash, because in deep forests light tends to have a unpleasent magenta cast and not always it's possible to use reflectors to redirect some light to the darker parts of the mushroom (namely under the cap). Used with parsimony, flash can give you all the light you need, render better and more natural colours and even create a mood.

So, here's my method and 'workflow'...

I always use a tripod for critical work (besides taking photographs, I'm also scientifically interested in mushrooms, so I may only take a 'fast' shot to document what I see); I use a Manfrotto 190 with a 410 Geared Head, which is a fantastic tool to allow precise composition - it's not essential, but it helps a lot.

I always use Av - because it is more useful to control aperture (Depth of Field!) than speed and because this way flashes behave like I want (get there in a minute).

I try to compose according to what I have (a single mushroom vs. several mushrooms; big vs. small; a close portrait vs. a more 'environmental' shot) being careful with the manipulation of the mushrooms (usually very fragile) when taking apart small branches or leaves.

I select the apropriate aperture, according to my 'view' of the scene, using the DoF Preview Button to emulate the final result.

I put a flash in a appropriate location (reasonably close to the mushroom, at a 45º angle from the camera), connected with an E-TTL cord and with a diffuser (I use Lumiquest Pro Max System). Using Av, the flash will behave like a fill flash (in M, it would have been the main source of light, with a completely different result), and with the difuser, the light will be soft enough to NOT produce harsh and unnatural light but will fill the darker parts of the image, resulting in a very pleasing image.

Finally, I take several shots, changing aperture, recomposing, doing exposure compensation, reducing or increasing flash power (FEC), repositioning the flash... until I have a shot I like.

Recently I've been trying to use two 580EX flashes to illuminate my mushrooms, but I still don't master that technique and I guess I'll be strugling with ratios for some time.

Regarding your second attempt, I find the first shot with a poor composition - you decentered the mushroom, but the base of the stipe is too close to the margin of the picture, the mushroom is not straight and there's an unappealing void in the left half of the image. Shooting mushrooms is not quite like taking a portrait of a person, where you can use eyes direction to 'fill' that void (or, better said, the void allow the look to breathe), because mushrooms don't have eyes. From my experience, I believe only two tipes of mushroom photos work well: close portraits or environmental shots (where the mushrooms take a smaller role in the picture, that shows more of the surroundings). In other words, I'd prefer a tighter vertical composition with a straightened mushroom, The second picture results better IMO, because the fallen branch (or root?) balances the composition.

Right now I don't have images to post, but next week I'll have access to my archives and I'll post some pictures to ilustrate my words.

By the way, if you ever get interested in identifying mushrooms, here are some tips to your species: #1 and #2 may be the same species and I suspect they can be Cortinarius sp. #3 is not a mushroom: it's a Myxomicete called Lycogala epidendron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycogala_epidendrum). From your second post: I think the first species is, again, a Cortinarius (maybe the same species as before) and the second picture is of Hydnum rufescens.

Keep taking pictures and keep posting!

Thanks for your help! Actually the first images are of clytocybe odora (anise clytocybe). Good job on the ID of the other shrooms though!

chupacabra31 wrote:
Thanks for your help! Actually the first images are of clytocybe odora (anise clytocybe). Good job on the ID of the other shrooms though!

Ooops... Sorry about that...

EDIT: I should've noticed the white gills (fully mature Cortinarius have rust-brown gills)! OTOH, I couldn't smell the anise odour.

Pedro Claro wrote:
...Finaly, regarding flash, I understand why many people don't use it - harsh light, unnatural look -, but (pardon my immodesty) I believe it happens because most people can't use flash properly...

Agreed!

The wider the angle of the lens you use, the more detail you're going to get in the background (assuming you're not shooting close to or at life size). So if you are having problems with distracting elements in the background either look for scenes that allow for some room between the subject and the background or switch to a longer focal length lens. Shooting with smaller Fstops also helps -get out of the mentality that everything needs to be in focus or sharp. No one walks though an art museum and complains that the paintings don't have enough detail...

Back with some photos to illustrate my words.

As I said before, flash can be used - with parsimony - without the side efects most people refer to. No harsh light, no solid shadows...

[Amanita phalloides - Canon EOS 300D, Tamron 90, 420EX? at an angle of +/- 45º]



A flash can deliver vivid colours, much closer to the real ones and avoid a certain flat look, which is worsened by the deep-forest magenta cast... Although the photo has been enhanced in PP, the original RAW has very vivid colours, much better than the photo made without flash.

[Lepista nuda - same set as above]



It's also a quite versatile tool - it can be positioned anywhere, pointing to any place, which is ideal to eliminate undesirable shadows or to give a touch of light to certain areas of the photo. In this photo, its use was essential to illuminate the gills, the rings and the upper half of the stipes of these mushrooms.

[Gymnopilus spectabilis - Canon Poweshot G2, old manual flash triggered manually during exposure]



And it's not always possible to use reflectors, because there's no light source to use. In the next example, the mushrooms were in a very dark place and there was no sun light to redirect...

[Coprinus disseminatus - Canon 300D, Tamron 90 Macro, 420EX? at an angle of +/-45º]



All pictures taken with a tripod, with reasonably long exposures. Using aperture priority (AV), flash acts as a fill-in source. I can't remember if I used any kind of diffuser, but possibly it was used a simple one (paper sheet ou some kind of plastic). All photos are 100% crops and only slightly (and quickly) PPed (Unsharp Mask, levels). I also don't remember which flash was used for the 300D shots, because I've had a 420EX, a 550EX, a 430EX and now have a 580EX and a 580EX II... Because these are earlier photos, I believe it was used a 420EX or a 550EX, most likely the first one.

More to follow...

I have noticed that with my 430EX flash in ETTL-II mode on high speed sync and say 28mm with -3 it tends to give images this orangish cast. Is this normal?

chupacabra31 wrote:
I have noticed that with my 430EX flash in ETTL-II mode on high speed sync and say 28mm with -3 it tends to give images this orangish cast. Is this normal?


This is not the way I take mushroom pictures, so I'm not really sure about your question. I assume, by your settings, that you're doing handheld photos using the flash as the main source. If this assumption is correct, the orangish cast may occur because of the flash.

Try using a tripod and Av.

Pedro Claro wrote:
chupacabra31 wrote:
I have noticed that with my 430EX flash in ETTL-II mode on high speed sync and say 28mm with -3 it tends to give images this orangish cast. Is this normal?


This is not the way I take mushroom pictures, so I'm not really sure about your question. I assume, by your settings, that you're doing handheld photos using the flash as the main source. If this assumption is correct, the orangish cast may occur because of the flash.

Try using a tripod and Av.

No, I actually rest the setup on a beanbag or my camera bag and sometimes secure logs or twigs under the lens (cant afford the expensive benro yet). Also make sure I use a remote release along with mirror lock-up. The ettl-II mode is for fill-in type flash, is it not? What mode would you suggest I use?.