Mona-Britt Posted September 21, 2014 Report Share Posted September 21, 2014 I found this picture I took earlier today very interesting. I wanted to post it on this site so that I could use the magnefying glass feature and to share with you all too. I thought I kept seeing shades of purple on the mushrooms and kept trying to capture that. I did nothing to the camera - it was set on automatic, no flash and on macro. I'll include the picture of the mushrooms the way they looked normally as well as the unusual purple color. I noticed some flakes from the mushrooms that fell on my shirt were purple as well. I also noticed that my shirt was dull yellow in the picture, but it is actually a brighter yellow as in the other picture. Seems like the mushrooms would have turned a dull color too along with the shirt color. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ladyflyfsh Posted September 22, 2014 Report Share Posted September 22, 2014 This is interesting, Mona. Were both photos taken under the same lighting conditions? Lighting can play some crazy tricks when it comes to photography. The magnifying glass option only works if the actually image size is larger than the thumbnail. In this case they are both the same. If you took one of these under fluorescent lights and the other in daylight it would be totally different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave W Posted September 22, 2014 Report Share Posted September 22, 2014 I'm a bit confused here. Mona, are you saying that the mushrooms appeared purple naturally? Or are you saying the purple color was something observed only in the photo? Or did you notice a slight purple tinge which you then tried to capture in a photo? Those look like some very purple Psaths in the one photo. A problem that I routinely encounter when taking mushrooms photos is getting the natural colors to come through in the photo. Often my camera wants there to be more red than naturally seen... or more green, or more yellow. I usually take multiple photos under the same lighting conditions, and then additional ones with the lighting adjusted to the best of my ability. I sometimes use a translucent white umbrella and a foil reflector to try to get the best lighting. Sorting through the photos once they're loaded onto my computer often amounts to trying to match the recorded color scheme to what I remember seeing in nature. I take virtually all of my mushroom photos outdoors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mona-Britt Posted September 23, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2014 Yes, they were both taken in the same lighting conditions, in the woods on a sunny day. I know lighting can play crazy tricks, so I always take multiple pictures and keep the ones that are true to what I see. No, this purple color is not what I saw and that is why I am so amazed at how the camera captured that. Someone else from facebook said something about light bending? Or bending light? I was just really surprised, and still am about the color, especially the fact that my shirt is a dull yellow in the picture and the mushrooms such a beautiful purple color. Did the camera capture something the naked eye can not see I wonder? These mushrooms are supposed to have a dark purple spore print (I did not know that until later). I did see shades of purple (hardly noticeable), but not this kind of purple. On this site, the pictures are much bigger than what I post on facebook or in my personal computer's picture file. Also, I noticed they are slightly bigger when you click on them here too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Smalldridge Posted September 23, 2014 Report Share Posted September 23, 2014 One problem may be white balance. On most cameras you can set this manually.This tells the camera what color things should be based on the type of lighting and what should be white in the photo. For outdoors it should be set to the sunlight setting. As a last resort, white balance can be corrected in most post processing software. Another thing to consider is the direction the light is coming from. Even in shade there is a direction the visible light is hitting your subject. For example if the sun is setting, photographing the side of your subject facing the sunset will produce different results than photographing the side of your subject facing away from the sunset. I would also suggest not using on camera flash as the results are much more variable based on distance to subject and how much power the camera tells the flash to output. Off camera flash as DaveW points out can be tailored for best results. If you are using the camera in auto mode, then the camera will fire the flash whenever it decides is necessary. To avoid this, you will need to set the camera to P or program mode. This mode is like auto mode but will let you decide whether or not to use the flash. In poor lighting conditions such as in the woods on an overcast day, I would suggest using a tripod and setting the camera for delayed shutter firing. I hope this helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Smalldridge Posted September 23, 2014 Report Share Posted September 23, 2014 Just as an experiment, I took the second photo into iPhoto and brought down the warm colors of the shirt and the cooler purple colors came back into the mushrooms. This I believe most likely is a white balance problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mona-Britt Posted September 23, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2014 I had turned the flash off for all of these pictures. I have never heard of white balance. Interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Smalldridge Posted September 23, 2014 Report Share Posted September 23, 2014 One other thing I forgot to point out is how light saturates colors or makes them more vibrant. Here are two photos taken with the same settings except for aperture. Photo A was taken in direct sunlight. Photo B was in shade. Photo A PhotoB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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