Photographic background. Which is the best color?

[Deadwood]

Look forward to seeing something special Grant.

Ad.

[Grant Bowie]

OK,

I have photograped an English hawthorn in Flower.

I chose a black background because of the flowers.
I moved it as far away from the background that the space would allow, which isn't much.
I used two shoot through studio lights on minimum setting.
Camera is a Canon EOS 1000d Digital SLR
No fiddling with images.

I started at 1/125 at F5.6

F 5.6.JPG

Next F 5.0

F 5.0.JPG

Next F 4.5

F4.5.JPG

Next F 4.0

F 4.0.JPG

Next F 3.5

F3.5.JPG

I went all the way up to F 10.0 but from F 6.3 it was getting too dark.

F 6.3.JPG

As time goes by I will try different things and see how they go.

F 3.5 to F 4.5 look OK; what do you think?

[Japh]

I attempted an HDR of your photos (hope you don't mind!), I thought it might work...

hdr.jpg

My favourite of your shots is the F5.0 one

[Grant Bowie]

What is an HDR?

[Petra]

G,day Grant I use two shades of blue mainly because it is easy for me to organise and shift around. As I only use natural lighting.
I have seen very good effect using Black with the flash.
Pup
Ps I like what you have produced so far

Pps I am about to put a tree up on the native forum that I would like some of your thoughts on

Hi Pup,

I can't use natural light as we only have a small squeezy, dark garage attched to the collection to work out of. Outside in the collection you have all the lines etc of the mesh on the roof spoiling the shot..

There is a daylight light out that you could buy from a lighting shop. They have been out for years. it is just like daylight.

[Japh]

What is an HDR?

In basic terms, it's putting all those together so you get the best range of lighting across all facets of the image. Wiki explains it in a ridiculous amount of depth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

If you search for HDR on http://Flickr.com you'll see it used to extremes and also to good effect