Withered Hyacinth Flowers Photography Experiment

Hub already threw the hyacinth plant at the trash bin. The next day, he was surprised to see that the plant was back where it was before. He was wondering why I took the hyacinth plant from the trash bin. He did not know that I wanted to do a photography experiment.

The STORY about my photography experiment and its details…

I found the withered hyacinth flowers a very good subject ever since I saw them getting dry. I experimented on taking macro shots of the withered hyacinth flowers using Sony Cyber-shot DSC W100. It was on a Saturday on April 11, 2009 after 11:00 A.M. when I took some photographs of the withered flowers.

Photo EXIF Data Information
Size: 2.5 MB
Dimensions: 3264×2448
Device make: SONY
Device model: DCS-W100
Color space: RGB
Focal length: 7.9
FNumber: 5.6
Exposure time: 1/40

I took the shots from our kitchen using the white wall as the background. I experimented taking the photographs without using flash and with flash. The kitchen was a little bit dim, without so much sunlight from the outside.

The photos below are actually just one picture. I took the shot of this particular photo with flash, made the background a little bit blurred, just a little bit, and focused on the flowers.

The photos were saved using three different settings. I reduced the size of the photos to save some time for downloading and bandwidth purposes. I saved the photos as PSD and BMP. Then I used BMP and saved the photos as JPG using Photoshop’s “Save for Web” instead of directly saving them as “Save as” from PSD to JPG.

I have experimented on this a long time ago, compared the results and found my method of saving a photo is actually bandwidth and space saver, and still with a good result rather than reducing the JPG file and then saving the reduced size of JPG as again JPG. Because of this method, I could not post a lot photos all the time. The process is long but I find it very useful from my point of view.

The first photo is the original. The two other photos were enhanced a little bit. This is just to show you the difference when photos were enhanced. The difference is not that much because as I see it I took a real good shot at this one. πŸ™‚ I will also give you the details of each photo so you might get an idea on how to save pictures without really compromising its quality. With that, you can also save some storage space and bandwidth.

I am giving you a lot of tips now. πŸ™‚

The photos were saved as BMP with file format OS/2 instead of Windows as I am not using Windows, and depth of 24 Bit using Photoshop. Then I saved the BMP as JPG, again using Photoshop with “Very High” quality setting instead of “Maximum” quality setting. The photos were saved with 80% quality rather than 100% maximum quality. The details are below why I saved the photos with 80% quality rather than 100%.

The original dimension of 3264×2448 was reduced to 480×360 and the size was reduced from 2.5 MB down to between 42 and 46 KB.

The first photo is the original and was not enhanced. Despite my way or process of saving the first photo, its quality was not really compromised. The second photo was enhanced using auto contrast. The third photo was enhanched using auto color correction.

ORIGINAL
Saved with Very High quality setting, 80%, from 2.5 MB down to 42.96K, 16 sec @ 28.8 Kbps
If saved with Maximum quality setting, 100%, size would be 109.8K, 40 sec @ 28.8 Kbps

AUTO CONTRAST
Saved with Very High quality setting, 80%, from 2.5 MB down to 45.8K, 17 sec @ 28.8 Kbps
If saved with Maximum quality setting, 100%, size would be 117.K, 43 sec @ 28.8 Kbps

AUTO COLOR CORRECTION
Saved with Very High quality setting, 80%, from 2.5 MB down to 45.69K, 17 sec @ 28.8 Kbps
If saved with Maximum quality setting, 100%, size would be 117.7K, 43 sec @ 28.8 Kbps

If the photos were saved from PSD or BMP using Photoshop’s “Save as” instead of “Save for Web” the size would be just like when being saved with Maximum quality setting.

Well, that’s it. Let me remind you though that I am just a hobby photographer and do not even understand all the technical details about photography. I do not read a lot about photography, actually very rarely, I just experiment.

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