gwing wrote:
Yes, it's a very nice lens indeed (if heavy).

To brighten them up the best way may be to take the shots in some contrasty sunlight amd maybe misted with some very fine water droplets but I suspect the comment actually referred to doing something in post processing.

If you open the photograph in your photo-editing program of choice there will almost certainly be multiple tools offered that can alter exposure, colour saturation and contrast to taste. If you take the shot in raw rather tha jpeg more post processing adjustment can be applied as well.

How your images are finally rendered is very much a matter of taste and can be adjusted in post processing to suit - personnaly I think your images alrteady sufficiently exposed and adequately saturated. A bit more contrast between shadows and highlight's may not go amiss and should be easy to do - exactly how you do it will vary according to the tool you choose.

Edit - sorry I just realised I'm not answering the original question about keeping the camera 150cm from the subject. I'm not sure I understand what is being asked here - the only thing that really matters is whether the bits of the subject you want in focus are in focus and obviously means that you can't go much closer than the lens can focus.

Pentaxophile wrote:
They look nice to me, could do with a bit of curves to brighten them up and give them a bit more contrast. Looks like a good flower lens!