Day 206 - Week of Lights - Rushing

I was rushing to post before midnight, so I did a few quick shots.  But I was still too late.  Ah, well!

Taken in a dark kitchen, light source is my iPod Lights App held in front of subject, at camera top.  I tried a couple of shots using aperture priority, but I was getting a far slower shutter speed than I wanted, causing overexposure.

So, I switched to Manual mode and set the shutter speed and aperture and got this shot.  This shot has minimal processing - I stepped up the vibrancy a bit, and that's all I did.  I wanted the lines to be brighter, but overexposing it a bit didn't yield the desired results.  I guess I will need to find another way to do this.  This goes on my list to try again in the future.

90 mm, f/4.5, 3.2s, ISO 400, AWB, Manual Mode

Day 205 - Week of Lights - Lemonade

My weekend started today as I've got the day off tomorrow.  But I would have loved this long weekend more if I knew I could just chill and do as I pleased.  Well, life isn't so simple, nor was it meant to be.  So, I have to run errands and get a lot of important stuff done tomorrow, including an oil change and getting winter tires put on.  At least I know that driving will be better when the snow hits.

To commemorate the early start to the weekend, I decided to drink lemonade out of my stemware!  What an idea!  No, I'm kidding!  I just needed another subject for the light experiment for this evening, and I thought that trying to catch the rainbow reflections would be nice.  But the light from the iPod wasn't bright enough to do that.  But I got close to what I wanted, so I gave up after about 10 shots.  Again, I shot these images with the lights off.

In the first image, the colour you see in the background is created by the streetlights reflecting on the wall; and the junk I had on my table, behind the subject, helped create the soft patterns.

Both shots were taken with the 90 mm lens with the glass placed on top of my iPod screen with the light coming from the Lights app.

f/6.3, 30s, ISO 400, Aperture Priority, AWB

f/6.3, 1/6s, ISO 400, Aperture Priority, AWB

I think I like both the shots!  The bottom one looks quite pretty actually.

Day 77 - Light experiment

I hadn't had the time or opportunity to take a photo during the day, but when that happens I definitely start thinking about a staged subject.

I saw something similar to this earlier in the day (of course that photo used way more sophisticated techniques and props than mine), and I'd wanted to try it out.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to get the controls right, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.  I will definitely write about this again when I've had a chance to fine tune it.

Day 70 - Playing with custom white balance and lighting

My subject was a single red gerbera that a pretty little 4 yr old girl gave me.  She always has something to give me when she sees me - whether it's a "Princess" sticker, or a flower, or a paper cutting that she made herself.  Unfortunately, I never have anything on me that befits that little princess and that's worth offering (I usually see her in the elevator when I am either returning home from work or on my way down to the recycling bins)!  One of these days I must go up to her apartment and I better bring her a nice gift.

Anyway, so here are the experiments with the gerbera that I did over a few hours starting in the evening after it was almost completely dark, and continuing the following morning.

For this image I used my TV as the background, with two low-powered lamps placed at least 6 ft away on either side, aperture priority, f/5.6, ISO 100, spot metering, exposure bias of 1/3 stop.

Natural light at ISO 400, manual, f/5.6, 10s, spot metering

Shot with custom WB, aperture priority, ISO 200, exposure bias of 1/3 stop

90 mm macro lens, aperture priority, pattern metering, ISO 800 (flower was kept in low light), f/5.6

Shot with 90 mm macro lens, custom WB, manual, pattern metering, ISO 100 (flower was in bright ambient light), 1/8s, f/10