Just a cactus

Images taken in a controlled environment or with a posed subject. All subject types.

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Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

My screen is not callibrated. The background is black and the terracotta pot, purple petals and green stigma all look as I would expect.

The only thing I would challenge is the title. I would say that there is no such thing as "just a cactus". :)

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

Obviously a properly UK adjusted computer Harold, it's them or us, or is that US = America? :lol:

DaveW :D

Gérard-64
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Post by Gérard-64 »

Nice shot,I do not see any ripples or blocks of noise on my monitor..(CF Rik)

augusthouse
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Post by augusthouse »

You know; it occurred to me a while back just how important a good monitor is for our purposes with regard to photography.

It is basically the window into our digital darkroom. We can have the best camera gear around; but if our window is foggy it makes things a whole lot more difficult and universally less accurate especially in post production or 'developing'.

Consideration in regard to monitor selection should be up there with camera selection - it's that important! You don't need to spend a fortune to get a beauty.

Dave, do you want to know what the colour of that velvet is in Australia????

Yep, I use a Spyder3.

That is a beautiful flower.

Craig
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

rovebeetle
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Post by rovebeetle »

What a splendour! All my cacti at home have rather inconspicuous white or purple flowers.
rjlittlefield wrote:Currently my monitors are all running as out-of-the-box.
That might be the reason, because in virtually all monitors the factory settings are way too bright.
The BG appears uniformly black here in my office but that's a cheap (although calibrated) 19" CRT and I do not trust it very much.

I will have a look again at home on my new EIZO 2431. Talking about brightness. When calibrating the EIZO I had to turn down the brightness to 23% to achieve 140cd/cm² at 6500K. Many graphic geeks even work with 120cd/cm².

Cheers
Harry

Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

rovebeetle wrote:What a splendour! All my cacti at home have rather inconspicuous white or purple flowers.
Cheers
Maybe you should try some epicactus hybrids, their flowers being up to a foot (30cm) across, in white through pink to red, sometimes yellow and all combinations, often scented too. Parodia/Notocactus have at least yellows, oranges, reds or purples and are typically a couple of inches across. Rebutia and Lobivia have smaller flowers (often red orange or yellow) but lots of them.

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

rovebeetle
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Post by rovebeetle »

Harold Gough wrote:
rovebeetle wrote:What a splendour! All my cacti at home have rather inconspicuous white or purple flowers.
Cheers
Maybe you should try some epicactus hybrids, their flowers being up to a foot (30cm) across, in white through pink to red, sometimes yellow and all combinations, often scented too. Parodia/Notocactus have at least yellows, oranges, reds or purples and are typically a couple of inches across. Rebutia and Lobivia have smaller flowers (often red orange or yellow) but lots of them.

Harold
Harold, please stop it I'm already drooling! Seriously, the maintainance of our cacti is my wife's business (and hobby), and as soon as our little one gets a bit older and needs less care I will go and buy her some of the genera you suggested.

Thanks
Harry

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

"Dave, do you want to know what the colour of that velvet is in Australia."

Yes please, but bear in mind Craig you being in Australia will obviously be looking at the back of the velvet! :lol:

Epicacti are florists flowers Harold!

As Harold says the Notocacti mostly have quite large yellow flowers, but there are some different coloured ones. Notocactus rutilans for instance.

Image

(is the background black on this one?)

DaveW

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

Or even try Rebutia's as Harold says.

Rebutia cajacensis

Image

The cacti with small white or red flowers sound like Mammillaria's, although they can be quite eye catching when full of flowers.

DaveW

Aynia
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Post by Aynia »

Now that is a stunning cactus.! :D

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

rovebeetle wrote:
rjlittlefield wrote:Currently my monitors are all running as out-of-the-box.
That might be the reason, because in virtually all monitors the factory settings are way too bright.
The BG appears uniformly black here in my office but that's a cheap (although calibrated) 19" CRT and I do not trust it very much.
Sorry, I misspoke. I turn down the maximum brightness too. But when I do that, I check to be sure that I haven't messed up the black point.

With the camera I just tested, there are 3 f-stops of exposure between getting RGB=32 and getting RGB=7.

If a monitor and its environment is set so that RGB=32 is black, then it's throwing away at least 3 f-stops of shadow detail, compared to a setting such that RGB=3 is black, and RGB=4 is not. The former setting is great if you like rich blacks and don't care about shadow detail. Personally I hate throwing away 3 f-stops of dynamic range in my subject.

--Rik

rovebeetle
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Post by rovebeetle »

Oh my goodness, so much beauty!

BTW - I have now looked at the original image on my home monitor and I can also see the "ripples". In addition, there are some other "patches" which look like finger prints on the screen but they are in the picture. My guess is that all this is just on the BG canvas which is not perfectly black in the image (and Eizo monitors are known for their excellent "black".

Cheers
Harry

rovebeetle
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Post by rovebeetle »

rjlittlefield wrote:
rovebeetle wrote:
rjlittlefield wrote:Currently my monitors are all running as out-of-the-box.
That might be the reason, because in virtually all monitors the factory settings are way too bright.
The BG appears uniformly black here in my office but that's a cheap (although calibrated) 19" CRT and I do not trust it very much.
Sorry, I misspoke. I turn down the maximum brightness too. But when I do that, I check to be sure that I haven't messed up the black point.

With the camera I just tested, there are 3 f-stops of exposure between getting RGB=32 and getting RGB=7.

If a monitor and its environment is set so that RGB=32 is black, then it's throwing away at least 3 f-stops of shadow detail, compared to a setting such that RGB=3 is black, and RGB=4 is not. The former setting is great if you like rich blacks and don't care about shadow detail. Personally I hate throwing away 3 f-stops of dynamic range in my subject.

--Rik
Seems we posted almost simultaneously. You are right of course. I don't like blocked shadows either.
So, as I wrote above, what we see is most likely some texture of the BG canvas, it doesn't look like posterization.

Cheers
Harry

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

DaveW wrote:(is the background black on this one?)
Not quite, but pretty close.

I can see some coarse texture to the left of the flower, roughly at the place where it meets the outline of the pot, and bits of dark gray at other places scattered around. Photoshop reports that the area left of the flower has an average value around 9, with a significant number of pixels up around 18.

Try adding a Photoshop levels adjustment layer and adjusting the middle slider until its number is up around 3. I think you'll be surprised to see how much detail is hiding back there.

--Rik

lauriek
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Post by lauriek »

These look a lot better to me!!

Does anyone here actually run calibrated monitors (I mean calibrated with a proper hardware dongle, not by eye) and if so what hardware do you use, and how do you find it?

Craig how easy do you find the S3 to use, and do you recalibrate regularly?

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