Saturday, March 26, 2011
Project 4: Water Drops Part 2
Just a quick addition to the previous post. I gave it another shot tonight using an apple. I liked the results but the lighting was more hit or miss. I tried bouncing the light off the back like yesterday but didn't seem to work as well. I ended up holding the flash in my hand for the majority of the apple shots.
Project 4 Complete: Water Drops
I'm trying to get ahead to my deadline of Sunday so maybe I can play some golf this weekend. The goal this week was to try my hand at water drop macro photography. Well let me tell you, based on today's experience it's not as easy as it looks OR at least it wasn't for me.
My first issue is that I hardly ever use a flash. I had to read the manual to figure out how to get my camera to wirelessly trigger the flash and how to configure the flash to receive the signal. All that was pretty easy once I located the right pages.
Setting up was a little more difficult. I wish I had taken a picture of my setup, maybe next time. Anyway I had a shallow clear glass pyrex dish filled with water sitting on the kitchen counter, a stool on the counter and a piece of white board propped up against it. On the seat of the stool was a long metal clamp (think the kind that holds boards together), which I was using to suspend the baggie over the pyrex dish. To hold this baggie I had a large clamp. Oh I forgot to hold the metal clamp in place I use one of my photo backpacks.
Time to shoot. I placed the flash to the left of the camera at 45 degrees aimed at the white background. The goal wasn't to directly light the water but have the light bounce to illuminate freeze the splash. The most difficult thing to do was to get the baggie to release the right amount of water. It was either too much or too little. I think I'm going to try this again but using the kitchen sink.
Anyway, here are what I thought were the most interesting of the shots I came out with. Oh, if you want to get the image blue just change your white balance to tungsten.
My first issue is that I hardly ever use a flash. I had to read the manual to figure out how to get my camera to wirelessly trigger the flash and how to configure the flash to receive the signal. All that was pretty easy once I located the right pages.
Setting up was a little more difficult. I wish I had taken a picture of my setup, maybe next time. Anyway I had a shallow clear glass pyrex dish filled with water sitting on the kitchen counter, a stool on the counter and a piece of white board propped up against it. On the seat of the stool was a long metal clamp (think the kind that holds boards together), which I was using to suspend the baggie over the pyrex dish. To hold this baggie I had a large clamp. Oh I forgot to hold the metal clamp in place I use one of my photo backpacks.
Time to shoot. I placed the flash to the left of the camera at 45 degrees aimed at the white background. The goal wasn't to directly light the water but have the light bounce to illuminate freeze the splash. The most difficult thing to do was to get the baggie to release the right amount of water. It was either too much or too little. I think I'm going to try this again but using the kitchen sink.
Anyway, here are what I thought were the most interesting of the shots I came out with. Oh, if you want to get the image blue just change your white balance to tungsten.
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| Kings Crown |
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| Water Polo |
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| 3 Enjoy, Masamitsu |
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Project 3 Complete: Flower Macro
Well it's way overdue but I finally made the time to attempt flower macros. I think the images turned out okay but think I could definitely do a better job if I had more time. Just seems like I can't / don't / won't make time to spend with my camera. It's going to get even tougher since golf season is right around the corner. Anyway, enough rambling.
As you can tell by the sample images, I have a lot to learn when it comes to macros. I did remember a few things from my past attempts. The primary one was to ensure to use LiveView to get the image as sharp as possible. It would have been close to impossible to get these images sharp just using the viewfinder. Also the depth of field with macro photography is so small even at f40 (which these we shot at) it's still pretty narrow.
For the images themselves my setup was very simple. I wanted a high key effect to the images so I had a large tri-fold white foam board as my background, the flower was clipped to a cup so I could easily arrange and try different compositions. These were all shot in my kitchen using only natural light (can't afford a fancy dancy ring-flash).. Actually it was even darker since the blinds were closed, didn't want the light & dark stripes showing up as the background.
As you can tell by the sample images, I have a lot to learn when it comes to macros. I did remember a few things from my past attempts. The primary one was to ensure to use LiveView to get the image as sharp as possible. It would have been close to impossible to get these images sharp just using the viewfinder. Also the depth of field with macro photography is so small even at f40 (which these we shot at) it's still pretty narrow.
For the images themselves my setup was very simple. I wanted a high key effect to the images so I had a large tri-fold white foam board as my background, the flower was clipped to a cup so I could easily arrange and try different compositions. These were all shot in my kitchen using only natural light (can't afford a fancy dancy ring-flash).. Actually it was even darker since the blinds were closed, didn't want the light & dark stripes showing up as the background.
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