Fungi Images on the Net ver. 2 Flemming V. Larsen.

Fungi Photography
I am not a professionel photographer, so don't consider what you read here as the golden rules of photography. This is just some guidelines according to my experience with fungi photography. I won't be covering the  top professionel equipment like midlle or high format cameras and film - but focusing on the more transportable equipment most people are likely to carry around on there field trips.

• Equipment
• Lightning and film
• Scanning
• Image compression for the web
• The motive
• Read more (links)

 

Equipment The camera Nowadays your first choice seems to be whether to go for a standard SLR film camera or one of those new digital cameras. The digital cameras are getting cheaper day by day but still they aren't at a level where you can compare them to a standard SLR camera.  First of all when we talk about images resolution the film resolution is at least 20 : 1 compared to the digital images. You can't of course argue that a resolution at 1028 x 756 is enough for you if you only want to publish the images on the web - but then you have to consider that the image you get from the digital camera is already compressed - so there maybe some unpredictable artifacts and you'll lack some information if you want to do some manual retouching afterwards.  Furthermore considering the weather condition most fungi prefer I am a little concerned about the durability of the electronically parts in a digital camera. Therefore my choice would be a good quality SLR camera. As you are likely to carry it with you through many tuff landscapes be sure to look for a robust lightweight 25 mm single lens camera. And go for a camera with a self-timer (could be substituted by a cable release) and option for manual   exposure settings (both shutter speed and aperture).   The Lens To come close enough to the many tiny fungi out there it's a must to have a macro (also known as micro-)  lens. Some camera come with e.g. 35-80 mm zoom with macro and they are very good  although they can be a bit heavy to carry around. If you have the money for it a dedicated 50 or 60 mm macro lens is the best. As a substitute/extras you can use a set of  Extension Rings.   The Tripod As you'll be working a lot with self-timer / cable release and low shutter speed be sure to have a good flexible tripod. Look for a tripod where you can have the camera close to the ground: either a small "pocket" size, one that can spread it legs wide or one with a telescope pipe that can be placed upside-down  Filters The daylight coming through the green leaves of a spring forest gives a slightly grennish tone. To compensated for this you can use a color filter. The rule is to use a filter in a complementary color to the one you want to suppress - for the green it'll be a slightly red to orange filter. Out in the open a standard skylight filter is of good use both for suppressing the ultraviolet light and for protecting the expensive lens.    Flash Normally I'll prefer to use the natural light, but for some extreme conditions you might need some extra light. The build-in flash on many new SLR cameras won't do the job alone (to much direct lighting = hard shadowing), you'll need a couple of slave flashes for backlights. If your camera hasn't got a build-in flash you'll need a good main flash, preferably with a cable to attach it. For close-ups a ring flash is god. read more about lightning below

 

Lightning and film As mushrooms often grows in the darker area of nature, lightning condition is a main issue in fungi photography. Natural lightning As mentioned above I normally prefer using the natural light when ever possible (to my taste the surface of many mushrooms photographed using flashlight tend to look too much like shiny plastic). To use the natural light I often have to use very low shutter speed (1 sek. and more), wich means using a tripod and the self-timer / cable release. To lit up the underside of the mushroom or to reflect the light to other shadowed area I often use a couple of white cardboard (aprox. A4 / Letter size fitting nicely in my rucksack). When it comes to which type of film to use I prefer the more flexible postive film (slide) for the negative film (prints). An issue often overlooked not only by amateur photograpers but also by the film manufactures is to have the right film for low shutter speed.

 

Scanning To have your pictures transferred to a computer you'll need to have it scanned in a digital format. There are to ways to go: If you only need to have a small amount of picture scanned occassionally the cheapest way is to have your pictures transferred to a photo-CD. Otherwise you'll need your own scanner. If you allready has a flatbed scanner yuo might be able to get a Slide-extension for it - But don't expect high resolution. During the last couple of year "low" prized specialized 35 mm slide(dias) and negative scanner like HP Photo Smart with optical resolution at +2000 dpi has been showing up. Most of them are adequate for the job. But if you really want a high quality you should go for one of the Nikon Coolscan family scanners - so precize in fokusing that they actually capable of "removing" scratches and dust from the film.

 

Image compression for the web There are two common format used for publishing images on the web: GIF and JPEG. You should be able to save your images in these formats from the majority of graphic software. GIF keeps the image information intact except that it can only hold 256 colors - it is best used for line art type of illustrations and illustrations with clear colored surfaced like technical drawings (spores) and logos etc. JPEG can hold millions of colors but it is a loosy compression (you loose some of the image information - so remmember to keep the original in e.g. TIFF format for other uses). JPEG is best suited for photorealistic illustration with a lot of uneven and mixed colors like (fungi) photos - and if you use the right compression rate, you can't hardly tell the difference between an 50 K JPEG and a 500 K TIFF. Allthough GIF are making larger file size than JPEG it might load faster on the website due to the fact that your computer has to work a lot harder to decompress the JPEG. Flashpix is a new and interesting format. It's like a jpeg'ed photo-CD format for the web: It contains several resolutions in one file, which makes you able to zoom fairly close into the image without pixelization and without having to download the full image file at once. The downsite is that the viewer has to use a plugin and that you have to have access a web-server for the uploading software.

 

The Motive ... coming soon ...

 

Read more (links) Nikon Photo-World Kodak: Taking Great pictures Photo.net A beginners guide to Photography Introduction to Photography Film Scanners Clic!o image making Bengt's Photo Page  Flashpix format