Lens and photo choices. Please help

[fengwei]

Dear All,

My friend is asking me to take some photos of her flower shop and make a nice catalog before the V'day . I never did such thing before, don't know which lenses and what kind of photos I should take.

I'm using a Pentax DSLR which has 1.5x crop factor.

Here are some thoughts I have in mind:
1. Take two lenses: 16-45mm f4 wide zoom lens and 100mm f2.8 macro lens. Use the wide zoom lens to take the shop's pics and some flower shots, use the macro lens to take some flower shots

2. Take some close-ups and some group shots (flowers together ), and of course the arrangement of the shop, and stuff like that.

I also have three other lenses: 50mm f1.7, 28-75mm f2.8 and 70-200mm f2.8. Do you guys think the two lenses mentioned in "1" are good enough? Or need I take some other lenses?

What kind of photos do you suggest to take and put in the catalog?

Your inputs will be very appreciated.

Thanks and happy CNY!

 

[user111]

bring all

sometimes u need to shoot wideangle but only with the main subject in focus - thats where the 28-75/ 2.8 comes in useful (ie f2.8 @28mm)

 

[reachme2003]

if it is for a catalogue, i would think that samples of flower arrangements would be like product shots. choose a plain or neutral colour background. for lenses, avoid wide angle. good luck and wish you full of inspiration.

 

[Hewland]

Hi fengwei,

Asides the lens dilemma, may i suggest flipping thru mags to enhance your ideas for your shoot? Do a quick analysis of angles, etc and make mental notes. Easier said than done but am sure you can do it.

If you don't mind the weight carry all the lenses with you - no more "Oh crap I didn't bring that lens with me!" situations. Or else '1' sounds fine with me.

And remember the tripod ya?

Enjoy!

P.S: Just a thought: After the shoot maybe can show us some of yr pics...and help advertise for yr pal in the process?

 

[zmwang]

Sorry for the OT. Got any discount or promotion of rose for the coming V'day?

 

[fengwei]

Thanks guys for all the suggestions. I'd bring three lenses this time (16-45mm, 28-75mm and 100mm macro). Of course I'd bring a flash and the tripod (thanks Hewland for the reminder )

Don't have any related book at hand right now. Will go to the library to check them out tonight.

To zmwang, sorry I don't know about the discount or promotion stuff. I'm not buying ('cause my lovers are not around ) and I'm not getting paid for this catalog thing (favor to a good friend ).

Thanks again and happy V'Days to all.

 

[ortega]

you can try looking a the flower shop's competition for some ideas
I might help if you know what are the pictures that are needed.
Has someone designed the catalog yet?

 

[fengwei]

you can try looking a the flower shop's competition for some ideas
I might help if you know what are the pictures that are needed.
Has someone designed the catalog yet?

Thanks ortega for the kind offer and suggestion. Actually my friend doesn't know what to put in the catalog. She just wants me to take some pics first, and help her to put up with a catalog. 'Cause the shop is quite new, just a couple of months since started. I guess she just wants to have a simple catalog as s start at the moment.

Will sure let you know if we need more help

Thanks again and happy V'Day!

 

[Feinwerkbau]

You have time to get this done by V Day?

Simple is good. Keep things clean, simple and elegant.

Too many florists try to cram too much into their printed materials and end up looking like everyone else (a bit 'lelong lelong' or undignified).

As for the shoots, I would suggest taking along a bounce card or device for your flash as well as a large piece of white cardboard for fill/reflector. I assume that the shots would be done with the flash mounted on the camera...

Alternatively, you could forget the bounce device and point the flash almost straight up (depending on how far you're going to be from the subject) and bounce that off the large white cardboard (2 x A3 taped together) held at least 3 - 5 feet above the camera. The white cardboard then acts as a 'false ceiling'. Life would be a LOT easier if you mount your cam on a tripod.

Let us know if you have more specifics. Producing good-quality photos of floral arrangements is not as easy as it seems ... a lot of it depends on the client's needs.

BTW... http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=floral+arrangements&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8

Aiyoh ... pai seh! Forgot one important point:

Many flowers, especially roses and lillies are temperate flowers. It would be best to prepare and shoot them in a cool, 18 degree AC room. I doubt if you want to shoot in an actual cold room.

 

[iwicaks]

bring a water sprayer.... your flowers might look fresher if they have a slightly "wet look". good luck.

 

[denniskee]

IMO, more importantly, have you got a person that can really create great flower arrangement? Its a make or break thing to me. Shooting is secondary.

 

[fengwei]

Thanks guys for all the suggestions. I managed to take some pics for my friends. Ended up she wanted not very complicated catalog, just some samples of her flowers (so she can show/send them to her clients).

Here are three samples I got. How do you guys think?

Any suggestions on how to frame these flowers? If you have a nice frame ACTION (for PS/CS) to share, that'll be great ;p

Thanks again and happy V'Day :heart:

 

[shioks76]

First pic is ok, try to use greater dof
maybe aperture of at least f8 The back flowers seems a bit blur.
Also the lighting on the pic is very harsh.
Maybe a diffuser on your flash or using a yellow spotlight

The other 2 the colors look abit dull.
Maybe add a bit more saturation in ps
or try to use more colorful or brighter flowers.
Try a darker color background for the pics for more contrast.

For pic 3 the main flowers(pink roses should be your main subject)
Therefore it should be standing out not buried under the baby breadth
and the green leaves.

Some champagne color roses would also be nice.

Honest opinion from my wife, the flower arrangements were not very well done.

 

[THEMAN]

I think you should have shot them against a white background and with some DOF? The images seem to lack contrast.

I find the angle you used a tad funny too. Very Oblique. A slightly lower camera POV would maybe have been better?

 

[fengwei]

First pic is ok, try to use greater dof
maybe aperture of at least f8 The back flowers seems a bit blur.
Also the lighting on the pic is very harsh.
Maybe a diffuser on your flash or using a yellow spotlight

The other 2 the colors look abit dull.
Maybe add a bit more saturation in ps
or try to use more colorful or brighter flowers.
Try a darker color background for the pics for more contrast.

For pic 3 the main flowers(pink roses should be your main subject)
Therefore it should be standing out not buried under the baby breadth
and the green leaves.

Some champagne color roses would also be nice.

Honest opinion from my wife, the flower arrangements were not very well done.

Thanks shioks76 (and your wife too ) for the comments and suggestions. I'll let my friend know about the flower arrangement.

Actually my friend is new to flower arrangement. She just started the business. Her shop is in a basement of a shopping mall. The lighting is really not that good. It's dim and yellowish. All flowers are not in their natural colors anymore Had to use flash (with stofen omnibounce attached) on all the shots. The best I can do is to do a lot of adjustment in PS/CS.

I only took whatever she wanted to be photoed. And I'm sure not all the pics came out okay. Might try again when time comes.

Thanks again and happy V'Day

 

[fengwei]

I think you should have shot them against a white background and with some DOF? The images seem to lack contrast.

I find the angle you used a tad funny too. Very Oblique. A slightly lower camera POV would maybe have been better?

Thanks THEMAN for the suggestion. As I posted above, there is no way I could get a clean background in that shop. You didn't see the original pics yet.

Here is the original pic of the first one above:

Guess you know it's not a easy case there

Anyway, thanks again for the suggestions. Will try again when time comes.

Happy V'Day !

 

[shioks76]

hey man, the original pic looks a lot better than the modified ones.
Keep the original pics. The backdrop here is ok already, the yellow lighting plus the lightbrown wall and the table gives a natural serene feeling.

Ill be more likely to buy online from the original pic compared to the ps modified one.

 

[blurblock]

personal view. slightly underexposed.

how about this?

 

[THEMAN]

How about this?

 

[fengwei]

Thanks shioks76 for the comments and blurblock and THEMAN for the PSing. Your versions are much better than mine. And personally I prefer blurblock's result. Guess I need to re-PS all the pics again Luckily all shots are raw files.

Cheers!