Flash softbox + background light

Today no artistic photo, but a general flash setup.

I used a plain white paper and wrapped it around my flashlight. Aimed towards the background to make sure this one is overexposed = white.  The side of the light is soft light going to my subject due to the paper in front of it.  Generally I put the flash a little more backward, but it had to fit on my picture ;).

The flash I put on manual mode and use the widest angle. First this helps more of the soft light towards my subject. Second this will make the flashlight go stronger by its natural calculation, helping the more white background and still sending enough light to the object.

A real quick resulting shot:

Enjoy

Flame

This might look like a difficult shot or a lot of Ps work, but actually this is nothing else but a normal macro shot, wide open aperture and the white balance completely wrong.  Due to the fact there is way to much blue in the balance, the flame and the background become grey.

The red point however was almost unchanged by this balance shift.

Enjoy !

Color spectrum on the CD

Easy shot, everyday thing, still nice :p

Perfect white studio

Today I tried to get a perfect white background by using some white cards.  I must admit I did not fully succeed, but it got really close with only about half an hour of positioning the cards.  Some Photoshop whitening did the trick ;)

The thing is you need a smooth transition between the horizonal and vertical white area's.  Ideally this is just one and the same field.  I used a few white cards to bounce off the flash to avoid too strong shadows.

Enjoy.

Matches under water

After my smoke experiments I got bitten by some kind of microbe i guess ;)
So once more an experiment, this time not with smoke, but bubbles.



Equipment : clean glass, sparkling water and matches.



 It was so easy that I only took 3 shots, to see some different Dofs, but I choose for the most stopped down aperture, F 16.  This also gave me a reasonable black background (while i was working on a white one), witch after a little darkening is just perfect.

The wireless flash is just a must have to achieve this and a macro lens helps (nothing was cropped off this picture, only resized)

After the initial black one, I made a few more, too much fun ;)

Hope you enjoy !

Brussels Sprouts

After a couple of macro shots, I decided it was time for something different: wide angle nature and landscape.

I know this category is far less popular to the average public, but I just love wide angle shots.  The thing is that it will always give you something you can not see by yourself due to its wider than normal human eye view.

A wide angle will give you always a very big field of depth, meaning you don't have to worry about your aperture so much and even the point of focus is less important.  I could fix the focus on 2m in manual mode for example and do a whole walk without a need of changing it. On top, a wide angle can use pretty slow shutter speed: e.g. at 10mm, 1/20 s would be more than enough for a hand held and steady shot. Could it even get easier than this?

I had in my mind to takes shots at aperture F 9-11 as this is two stops closed down from my max aperture and in general this is the sweet spot of your lens, meaning the sharpest images.  There was more then enough light to support this anyway. However, due to a "Sensor dust check" carried out at F25, I forgot to turn it back and that is the aperture I used to shoot, absolute beginner mistake, I know, luckily it turned out ok for the pictures.

Nikon D40, Sigma 10-20 DX and the garden.

Enjoy!

Day 6, post 6

Due to the fact I started a few days late with my 2010 blog, I had to catch up with a few shots.  Therefore forgive me with one more of the same thing, a smoke shot.
All details, see the link in the post below.

Enjoy ;)

PS: Sill using the wireless flash (absolutely necessary for these shots) and all other equipment as described below with the macro post.

Dark Smoke

Today I found the incredible nice youtube channel of Gavin with a lot of real nice tips for making pictures and editing them in PS.  One I had to try is the picture of smoke. What you see is only one of the results, I had many good shots, so it was quite hard to choose from.

Hope you enjoy it!

The channel I watched :   http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=PhotoGavin#p/u/20/P8_jUAvuilE

Snow in macro

This was one of the very few opportunities for me to make some snow pictures. Again a macro shot, but we will upload a landscape later on. The high contrast between the white snow and dark background is not only due to the whitening factor of the snow, but also by using a flash aimed parallel to the shooting direction. This way only the object floating in the air is highlighted and not the back.

Enjoy the beauty of nature!

Shooting Material: Sony A700, Tamron F2.8 90mm macro, tripod and a wireless flash.

X-mass in Perth

As this is the start of a new beginning, there is a lot of past witch I will no longer use.

However, one real special one still pops up in my mind to illustrate the feeling of Australia and X-mass: 40 degrees Celsius and a super warm Santa outfit ;) Luckily the little helpers were a little less warm dressed. Maybe you get the real Christmas feeling out of this, I didn't as much.

Enjoy!

Used material: Nikon D40 and its kitlens 17-55 mm.

Macro for dummies

Yep,

Yesterday we have been playing around with a camera I was not used to at all, the Alpha 700. Owner = my brother sadly.

Both the new camera and the fact I never used a real macro lens myself made this a very interesting experience. (and then I even forgot the wireless flash, also new to me)

For a beginner (with the new toys) I was pretty amused by the results. For sure this will look pretty standard to an experienced photographer, but for me it is a victory for myself and a more understanding into the world of macro photography.

Used equipment: Sony A700, Tamron F2.8, 90mm macro, Sony F36 wireless flash.

Hope you enjoy it!

First Blog

In order to celebrate my first blog, we took a picture from the old collection, back in Qatar.

Enjoy the beautiful sunrise, it took me a wake up around 5.15 am. :p