Day 215 - Christmas Theme (Pt. 4)

Just a continuation of the Christmas theme I'd started way back in October.  The first one was a quick shot while I was playing with the flash and got bored from not getting what I wanted.  

I also took the opportunity to get a little bit more comfortable using the monopod.  Although I found a couple more ways to be more effective and efficient with the tool, I'm absolutely convinced that you can't use it for anything slower than 1/8s shutter speeds if you want to get any sharpness out of your shots.   In fact, I think I'm steadier when hand holding my shots at 0.5 secs, than I am with the monopod at 1/8s!  Now, that's something!

154 mm, 1/10s, f/5.6, ISO 400, Shutter Priority, AWB

I had to use Shutter Priority because I wanted to fix the minimum shutter speed to avoid camera shake.

154 mm, 1/100s, f/6.3, ISO 400, WB set to Flash, but later adjusted in Lightroom, Manual Mode, Flash fired at -2 stops, external flash fired powered down to 1/8, placed 6 inches to right of subject and bounced off ceiling.  Phewww!  That was a long description! 

I'm not very happy with the second image.  The background is quite cluttered in this one, and could definitely have been better composed.  But as far as light is concerned, I think it's a slight improvement over previous tries.  I'm yet to figure out the power levels on my external flash - maybe I'm reading the levels all wrong as there are no markings on the bars to show the different levels and the one page user guide that came with it was mostly written in Chinese (at the expense of sounding ignorant, I wouldn't know if it was Mandarin or Cantonese).  Maybe the mystery will one day be solved?  Maybe I'll break down and Google it one day!

But meanwhile I'm definitely considering a light kit.  But the dilemma is always which one to get first - camera body, lens or light?  

Any suggestions?

Day 194 - Macro week - Colour me glad

I have decided to take on a macro challenge for myself for this week - any photograph I take will be with my 90 mm macro lens.  I will just have to put on my thinking cap and forge right ahead.  Me thinks, I might actually like this challenge.

90mm, f/32, 15s, ISO 100, Aperture Priority

Day 149 - Bailey's filled chocolates

I am starting to get into indoor mode already.  So, the first thing I did was to dust off my external flash that I had bought a few months ago and started experimenting with it.  I recently bought a few coloured bristol boards to use as backdrops, so along with my backgrounds, flash, and a steel serving tray that I use as a reflector, I got to work.

I used my 90mm lens for this shoot as the weather was pretty gloomy and I needed a faster lens to keep the ISO as low as possible.  I still had to have it at 400.  Most were shot in manual mode with the exception of the last one that was shot on AV.

With flash at a 60 deg angle to camera right at 1/64 power.

 Same set up but with flash at 1/16 power. 

 Off camera flash was pointed at the ceiling at 75 deg.  The on-camera flash was covered with a piece of paper to filter off the light since the camera was barely a foot away from the subject.  

This one is SOOC, shot only with ambient light. I think this is by far my favourite shot.

The top one was shot with the flash to camera right, at 1/16, and the steel tray used as reflector to cast a kind of rim light on the chocolate to the right at back.  The bottom shot was with ambient light and the reflector at camera right.

One of the last shots of the evening, I had a really hard time exposing the chocolate in focus.  I intentionally kept it away from the window side so I could use my flash/reflector to see how that would work.  I can't say I like this one much at all, but it was a good exercise to see how I could work with it. 

A fun shot - I seem to like doing this a lot lately! ;)

This was actually the very first shot that I used as the basis for the rest of the shoot.