The contrast of the orange and green is really nice. It's probably just me, but the focus point in the foliage to the left really draws my attention away from the poppy and I'm wondering if the poppy is out-of-gamut thereby losing some additional detail.
Richard, I'm sure the D300 has blinking highlights in the individual RGB channels. I'll bet if you checked, one of them would be blown out. I'll bet you it was the red channel. The reason I say this is that I can see that the orange flower has almost no detail. The red channel was blown out and you lost all sort of information.
My technique in these types of situations is to take a shot, check the individual RGB blinking histograms for blinking (overexposed) areas and adjust accordingly. DON'T use the LCD screen on your camera to judge the tonal quality of your photo. It's not that good of a screen. Use it for to judge the comp only. Your photos will look overexposed on your camera LCD but when you open them in Photoshop you'll put me in your will to thank me when you see all the detail you have.
Posted by Ned Fenimore on May 13, 2008 at 10:17 PM
The contrast is nice... agree that the RGB histogram will be your best friend in the field!
Discussion
3 repliesD300, Nikkor 17-55mm @ 52 mm, 1/1250 sec @ f2.8.
My technique in these types of situations is to take a shot, check the individual RGB blinking histograms for blinking (overexposed) areas and adjust accordingly. DON'T use the LCD screen on your camera to judge the tonal quality of your photo. It's not that good of a screen. Use it for to judge the comp only. Your photos will look overexposed on your camera LCD but when you open them in Photoshop you'll put me in your will to thank me when you see all the detail you have.