The 420 Fotographer Collective: Advanced Cannabis Photography

These two British Hoverfly (often mistaken for bumblebees) shots were taken with my 18-135mm lens only than cropped in I-Photo to bring them up close and personal, or as close as my camera will get without the use of tubes or a real macro lens.:)

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:circle-of-love::Namaste:
 
It’s been a while since I have worked on any projects or added any information in the form of tips or tricks. Went to take some shots of some government weed and wanted to correct the white balance.

Went shuffling around in my camera bag and couldn’t find my grey card. Then I remembered a tip my buddy gave me, you can use the inside of your camera bag in the place of a grey card.

 

This was shot at 100 ISO, with a Canon 80D, 100mm macro. Somewhere around F22. Tripod. Wired shutter release. With a light box overtop and reflector to the right. Custom white balanced with the mentioned camera bag divider.
 
Perspective is everything. Looking at things from another point of view is important. That what this post is about. We may have already talked about this but repetition is good when it comes to building habits.

Here is the after shot, to capture the whole plant, on its own it’s a fine shot of one of my plants. Good for the journal. But that’s not the shot I saw, or what caught my eye.

The cola isn’t symmetrical, so I looked at both halves, individually. To see how each side fills the frame.


This is what first caught my eye. These leaves and their curvature.


I also took some shots of some leaves. Playing around with the view.




 
Nice - I have a pretty nice 100mm lens for my new Nikon. It works great for the plants esp using the spike but I have trouble holding it steady enough for the little critters so far. Practicing techniques...

Got any time with the new camera yet? How’s the 100mm working out with the new Nikon? Got anything you want to share?
 
Hi Urb. :)

Yeah I’m using it a bit. Haven’t taken the tripod out again for a while and I have 100 photos to go through of stuff taken around the house so I’m ‘not allowed’ to take any more until I go through those and pick out the keepers ;).

I snapped these with that lens the other day - with flash tho so not excellent lighting (I was aiming for frost illumination:D). I am currently using it in auto/scene mode until I have time to learn a bit more and practice. Now that the outdoor grow season is firing up I don’t have much extra energy - so auto mode for a while it is ... and maybe I’ll think about getting some interesting lighting going.

Here we go - flashed snowy mountains :) (I did adjust the backdrop... )


Oh and I thought this one came out quite nicely too.


All handheld for now. I like your current studies in perspective. I’ve actually been doing just that with my pics of critters (birds lizards wallaby etc) and the native flowers. Just playing around with cropping and zooming in (the good camera makes this very satisfying!) - avoiding the whole for a change, as you describe :Namaste:
 
Hi Urb. :)

Yeah I’m using it a bit. Haven’t taken the tripod out again for a while and I have 100 photos to go through of stuff taken around the house so I’m ‘not allowed’ to take any more until I go through those and pick out the keepers ;).

I snapped these with that lens the other day - with flash tho so not excellent lighting (I was aiming for frost illumination:D). I am currently using it in auto/scene mode until I have time to learn a bit more and practice. Now that the outdoor grow season is firing up I don’t have much extra energy - so auto mode for a while it is ... and maybe I’ll think about getting some interesting lighting going.

Here we go - flashed snowy mountains :) (I did adjust the backdrop... )


Oh and I thought this one came out quite nicely too.


All handheld for now. I like your current studies in perspective. I’ve actually been doing just that with my pics of critters (birds lizards wallaby etc) and the native flowers. Just playing around with cropping and zooming in (the good camera makes this very satisfying!) - avoiding the whole for a change, as you describe :Namaste:
Very nice! It’s fun to get lost in thought and photos. Nicely done, looking forward to more!
 
Scoob has to make an appearance. It was taken a bit too hot, thought I edited it a bit to knock that down and add some shadows but after watermarking it, the thing looks too bright.

Still, fun working with little characters


 
Each time I harvest a new crop I have new willing participants in my photo shenanigans. The Scooby bud photo has become a must.

Trying to find a good presentation can be challenging. I really want a dedicated space for plant photography.

I used my usual array of tools. Canon, light box, homegrown, tripod, some props, reflector, these were the 100mm macro lens. Nothing spectacularl but good for the short session it was.

I mess around with anything as a base or backdrop/background. Containers, lids, paper, wood, things with metal, pillows, patterns, or anything else I spot. I bought this wood box container in Jamaica. Nice red background pops against the bud.

The white background on the other image is a 2 foot chunk of leftover white baseboard trim.

Never know what you will find when you wander off the path high as a kite on some government weed.




 
I mess around with anything as a base or backdrop/background. Containers, lids, paper, wood, things with metal, pillows, patterns, or anything else I spot.
I used the pages of my daughter's coloring book yesterday for the background of these;
20181115_082945.jpg
20181115_082707.jpg


I'm always trying to do something different, trying to find interesting textures. I've been collecting scraps of tile lately too for different backdrops. I'm a contractor, so tile scraps are free... and everywhere! LoL

Love your pics buddy!
:passitleft:
 
This has been rattling around in the ol duders head for a long time now.

I got motivated.



This was taken with my iPhone and tweaked to give it some character. I even wrote the Canadian Cannabis Anthem to go along with it.
:passitleft:
 
Here is an example of completing an image, and after a few days realizing something is not right, almost like the original edit wasn’t saved.

I went back and found another image in the series and worked from that one. To me it’s an improvement.

First one is a bit blown out (too white washed), also seems to be less sharp.


Here is the improved photo, more balanced light, and sharper.


It’s ok to go back and rework images after looking at it for a while.
 
Nice Urban - I love the Scoob:D

So hey some advice about something.

As some folks had mentioned they don’t resize their images for upload, just upload them at full res and let the onsite system do its thing, that’s what I’ve been doing recently, for ages actually.

So I got the tripod out the other day to get some sharper shots of these lovely colas and I’ve entered this one that I was really happy with in the PhOTM thread.


Thing is right - the compression at upload seems to have reduced the sharpness a lot and I see others pics with the kind of sharpness I expect so i feel like there is something I’m missing.

For example, when I zoom in on that photo on my iPad screen, the top of that cola looks like this
B3CED990-6ECD-4981-8208-9945D98C6EFF.png


Sothe photo is pretty sharp. :)

I get that you won’t be able to zoom in on the original once uploaded here and get the same resolution. I was just dissadpointed how it seems to make the photo seem less sharp than it is.

Maybe I’m imagining that and its perfectly fine - so will be happy if someone says that in response.

Otherwise, if you think it’s true that the upload is killing the photo quality and you have a particular method for retaining it, please share :Namaste:
 
Nice Urban - I love the Scoob:D

So hey some advice about something.

As some folks had mentioned they don’t resize their images for upload, just upload them at full res and let the onsite system do its thing, that’s what I’ve been doing recently, for ages actually.

So I got the tripod out the other day to get some sharper shots of these lovely colas and I’ve entered this one that I was really happy with in the PhOTM thread.


Thing is right - the compression at upload seems to have reduced the sharpness a lot and I see others pics with the kind of sharpness I expect so i feel like there is something I’m missing.

For example, when I zoom in on that photo on my iPad screen, the top of that cola looks like this
B3CED990-6ECD-4981-8208-9945D98C6EFF.png


Sothe photo is pretty sharp. :)

I get that you won’t be able to zoom in on the original once uploaded here and get the same resolution. I was just dissadpointed how it seems to make the photo seem less sharp than it is.

Maybe I’m imagining that and its perfectly fine - so will be happy if someone says that in response.

Otherwise, if you think it’s true that the upload is killing the photo quality and you have a particular method for retaining it, please share :Namaste:

Great shots of that beauty flower. A good entry for sure.

I notice the same degradation in some of the photos, I am sure its the website or photo processor compressing the data or something.

I resize the majority of my images now, to about 1200 pixels on the long edge. For a few reasons, smaller file sizes will make theft of my images less worthy, and it makes the file size small enough where any compression will not negatively influence my image. I think.

I havent really experimented too much with the image quality to get it as good as my original photos. I just upload them to IG lol
 
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