Shells #3
Posted: March 3rd, 2010 | Author: Mike | Filed under: Photography | Tags: 180mm L, candle, Canon 5D, macro, shells, still life | 3 Comments »Early morning meetings usually mean that I’m shooting something in the evening after my son is asleep. Easiest to shoot things lying around the house. We have a lot of shells lying around lately so I just grabbed a couple for tonight’s shoot.
Gizmodo is running a photo contest this week for what you can shoot in complete darkness except for the light of a single candle. There are no fancy prizes or anything, but I thought I’d try to kill two birds with one stone. I thought having just one candle might create too contrasty an image so I built a little sweep using some white paper and paper clips. The white paper served as a nice reflector to fill in some of the areas that would have been in dark shadows otherwise.
I thought I’d add a photo of how I set up my shoot on the kitchen counter. Of course, when I actually snapped the photos, all the kitchen lights were turned off.
Shell 1
Shell 2
How I set up the shot
Great results with only a candle.
Is it possible to give some more details on the camerasettings you used.
I’m just learning and have a hard time figuring out what settings are needed in what environment.
Sure thing, Vampie.
Here are the settings from the two macro shots above.
Shell 1: 1/2 second at f3.5, ISO 400. Candle was to the right of the shell just slightly in front of the shell.
Shell 2: 4 seconds at f8.0, ISO 400. Lighting was as shown above in the setup shot.
The camera was on a tripod and I focused manually with the lights on. Then I would turn the lights off and click the shutter.
Also, I was using the mirror-lockup function and had the camera on the timer setting to ensure that I didn’t contribute to camera shake with my hand.
I hope this helps!
tnx a lot. will try to put it to action soon.
Nice tip with the mirror lokup. didn’t ctually knew about that