Orange Splash

1/160 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100, 100mm (162mm eqv.), tripod, flash View Original

Fairly simple setup here. Alain recently got a new flash, a Yongnuo YN-560. That's it on the right @ ~1/16. My Sunpak 622 on the left @ 1/128 power. Both covered to protect from the splashing. We made quite a mess. That's foam flooring underlay on the sides of the fish tank to defuse the light.

Smashing Bottles

My friend Alain had the great idea to try to get photos of smashing bottles. He supplied the room, bottles, lens, and just about everything else. I brought my flash and rigged up a way to trigger it when the hammer was in just the right spot. Here's the results:

All photos were taken in bulb mode at f/7.1 and ISO 100.

Not all bottles are as easy to break with a hammer as you'd think. There was one kind that seemed to be much thicker glass than the rest and would just bounce off the hammer and put dents in the wall. We finally figured out that taping a screw to the hammer would concentrate the force better. The first photo above is the result of this.

At first we were thinking that we would trigger the shutter to release as soon as the bottle breaks, but then realized that we'd have to compensate for the split second it takes for the mirror to flip up. We wanted to be able to trigger both cameras at the same time and it's likely that they don't have the same shutter delay. Also, we didn't have a connector for Alain's camera. So we changed our plan and decided we'd trigger the flash instead. This worked much better. We'd get set up and turn out the lights, then open the shutter on each camera, then release the hammer. As soon as the hammer hit the bottle and moved part way through it, the flash would fire and expose the frame. I believe the flash duration at 1/64 is 1/15,000 of a second so there's no problem freezing the motion.

Our makeshift trigger system worked much more easily than I thought it would. It actually worked the very first try! We were able to make very fine adjustments so we could control exactly how far through the bottle the hammer would be before the flash fired. To trigger a flash all you need is to touch two wires together. I had a PC cord that was plugged into my wireless flash trigger. I soldered two wires to the other end of the PC cord and then soldered a thick twist-tie to each wire. We used thumb tacks to fasten the twist-ties to the hammer support (seen below) at the pivot, one on each side, so when the hammer swung, the two would touch. As soon as the flash fired we'd close the shutters again so that when the hammer swang back again, we wouldn't get a double exposure when the flash fired again.

Bee

1/125 sec, f/16, 50mm + extension tubes, tripod, lit w/ Sunpak 622 @ 1/64 power hand-held above through wax paper with reflectors on either side


1/125 sec, f/16, 40mm + extension tubes, tripod, lit w/ Sunpak 622 @ 1/64 power hand-held above through wax paper
View Original

Behind the Scenes

Here's our little studio. The white paper was used as reflectors, wax paper was set across the two reflectors to defuse the light and the flash was held, by hand, above the wax paper.

The second photo is a composite of about 20 photos. Since the depth of field is so narrow, I took many photos adjusting the focus between each one and then pasted together all the in-focus parts of each photo. It could be better.

All the orange bits is pollen from the flower.

Apples

I'm trying to get back into taking more pictures and updating this blog more often. My wife was out and Reuben was in bed a couple days ago so if I was going to do anything it had to be inside. This is what I ended up with. For more info, check out Behind the Scenes

1/125 sec, f/36.4, ISO 100, 35mm (56mm eqv.), hand-held, SunPak 622 @1/128 power ~12cm above, slight right.
View Original


1/125 sec, f/28.1, ISO 100, 55mm (88mm eqv.), hand-held, SunPak 622 @1/128 power ~12cm above, slight right
View Original

1/125 sec, f/36.4, ISO 100, 55mm (88mm eqv.), hand-held, SunPak 622 @1/128 power ~12cm above, slight right
View Original

Behind the Scenes

Here's a shot exposed for the ambient light in the room. The apple was (badly) edited, otherwise that area would have been completely blown-out (totally white). It was about 7:45 in the evening so sunlight was still coming in the windows. The ambient was quite bright, I had to close down my aperture quite a bit (f/28 and 36) to block out the window light. With the flash so close, about 10 - 15 cm, 1/128th power was enough to properly expose the apple at that aperture. The flash was actually in the shot for the first one and needed to be edited out. A spray bottle was used to add the water droplets.

In the first photo, you can see that the table reflects some light back up to the lower part of the apple. For the second photo, I wanted the lower part of the apple to go completely black so I found a blouse (I think that's what it's called) in my wife's closet that's made of a black, fuzzy, light-absorbing material and set the apple on it as you can see in the photo below. This killed the reflected light. In the last photo, the apple was on a white piece of paper.

Splash!

1/160 sec
f/19
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

1/160 sec
f/14
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Behind the Scenes

Update:
Actually, the camera in the picture is Alain's 50D with a 50mm f/1.4, but the pictures above were taken with my XSi (450D)

Splash!

1/160 sec
f/16
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Splash!

1/160 sec
f/16
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Splash!

Did some more splash photos. I finally got a flash (I'll talk more about it later), which makes things much easier. No longer do I need to worry about having the fastest shutter speed possible, so I can close down the aperture to get a deeper depth of field.

I think this picture is interesting because it's actually two drops colliding in mid air. The first drop makes a splash and then a drop from the splash moves up and hits the next drop coming down. There's many other, much better, examples of this on the web, but it's the first time I've caught it.


1/160 sec
f/16
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Kiwange

1/50 and 1/80 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400, 55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm), hand-held, halogen lighting and a little on-camera flash for the orange

This is another joint effort with Alain.

Behind the Scenes

Splash!

1/4000 sec, f/1.8, ISO 800, 50mm (35mm eqv. 81mm), tripod, halogen lighting

Thanks to Alain for the use of his hand :)

Splash!

1/600s, f/5.6, ISO 1600, 179mm (286mm eqv.)

Splash!

1/600 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600, 179mm (35mm equivalent: 286mm)

Studio Alain

My friend Alain set up a little studio in his basement using white fabric and some halogen work lights. It worked better than I expected.

Flower

My friend Alain and I set up a little studio to photograph this flower. It wasn't much, just a dark room with some halogen work lights, because neither of us own a flash yet. We sprayed it with water just to make it a little nicer.

Red seems to be a hard colour for me. Whenever I do something with a lot of red, it never turns out quite the way I'd like. I'm not really sure how to explain what I mean, I just think it could be better.