[silver]

watch round the crystal car I like,. perhaps a white sheet of paper below (and out of shot) would have helped with the illumination on the lower of the watch - dunno,.

either way it's a good way to learn about lighting, using small scale to see what can be done - might have to have a go you've inspired me

Sil

[Quadophile]

I agree about the white sheet idea, but I will have a tough time trying to handle the reflection if any from the white sheet particularly on the saphire crystal on the watch itself. When shooting I had to get the angle of the watch in line with the lens as the reflection was causing the black dial to look a bit washed out and grey in color. The polarizer just was not workable since the shutter speeds were in the vicinity of 1 to 1/2 second and aperture was between 3.4 to 5.6 in the given light. By putting on the polarizer I was loosing the depth of field and the image was not a pleasent one to view. Anyway will work on it again on Sunday..

Would love to see your pictures

[silver]

yes - I am sure it's a lot easier to make suggestions that it is to actually do it! :lol

I will have a go

Sil

[Raje]

Hey Quad... ever dabble in studio light painting. I've never done it with a digital camera, always a normal SLR. But I'd be interested to see what you could come up with.

[Quadophile]

Originally Posted by Raje

Hey Quad... ever dabble in studio light painting. I've never done it with a digital camera, always a normal SLR. But I'd be interested to see what you could come up with.

I think I know what you mean but just in case, would you elaborate for my correct understanding of what YOU mean by "studio light painting"?

[Raje]

Sorry, thats what they called it in highschool. Its techniqe where you actually paint in your pictures with light. May sound confusing but *can be very simple

You will need a tripod, camera with shutter speed b (you need to be able to leave the shutter open for long periods of time, flash lights, flash or high powered strobe, preferably a black back drop.

I think its best described if I tell you about 2 pictures I have done in the past.
For the fisrt picture I set up my tripod and camera and turned off all the lights. I opened the shutter and then walked over to my desk( sometimes hard to manuver in pitch black) I then took a tiny flash light and actually traced areas of the desk and various objescts on it. Anything I wanted to really stand out, I traced more. Any thing I wanted hidden I shined no light on it at all. This allows complete control of exposure for the entire photo. I then used a bigger flash light and placed it directly in front of the lamp where the bulb was, and pointed it towards that lens, and flashed it. This gives the illusion that the lamp was on, (God I hope I am not confusing you) This photo took about 20 min to complete. When I guessed* I was done, I walked over to the camera and closed the shutter. Did several areas of the room. Its amazing how much freedom this can give you.

The next picture was in a studio setting. I had a person stand infront of a black back drop. I had him hold out his hands as if he was juggling, (hands out, curled just a bit, head tilted looking up) When I felt he was in best possible posisition, I turned the lights off and opened the shutter on the camera(on a tripod). I then walked used a flashed the room with a standard camera flash. This give an intial imprint of my subject. I then walked over and used a very large flashlight and placed it in his hand, bulb facing camera lens. I flashed the flash light quickly. I did so again for the other hand and again, just above my subjects head, in the area of where he might have been looking. I also used the flash light to iluminate the area around his hands. I then close the shutter, then turn on the lights.
When I was done and developed the picture with high contrast. When all done, it gave the illusion that he was actually juggling 3 balls of light.

Lots of things can be done and you can flash over and over again, I had my subject actually pretend to be in a fight, having him shadow box feely and every few secnds told him to freeze, flashed and had him continue. When this pic was done, you saw every pused moment, ghosted on top one another, looked like an agent from the matrix dodging bullets.

Any more questions I'll be happy to answer. And if you really would like I'll look to see If I have any examples to post.

[Quadophile]

Raje,

I am aware of the "painting with light philosophy" that you very well described in your post. I remember when I had purchased the Nikon film camera back in the early 90's had the facility to couple itself with the SB-24 flash unit, the best at that time from Nikon to give the user the ability to have the option of rear curtain synchronisation. With this method employed one could take a long exposure of a moving subject and just at the end of exposure the flash would fire to freeze the action. This resulted in blurry moving image being recorded on film and the final moments would capture the subject giving perfect trail behind rather than in front. The rear curtain sync was the only way to accomplish that. I used this technique in many pictures that I took back then. That was the film camera.

What you describe above obviously is a very long exposure and I am sure the reciprocity failure must have played havoc with the colours of the image you were taking. Some of the films have very poor rating in that respect.

Coming to digital, you know that the reciprocity failure is not an issue but there is something else which will render the image not being very pleasant, its the digital noise which plays havoc when you shoot anything over 1 second. Some of the cameras do better than the others but some are absolutely incapable of managing a decent image.

The other thing which I have experienced having played around with both film and digital types is that the digital is very good when it comes to low key images but does poorly in high key images; this is the other way around when it comes to films. In time to come this will improve as it has since the introduction of the digital camera. The other thing with the type of photography you describe is the power required by a digital camera. Bulb setting on digital for long exposures would be a very big drain on the batteries unlike the cameras of olden days when you never worried about the bulb setting which could last for hours as in pictures depicting the movement of the stars at night.

I have to find time to do this but would feel more comfortable when I replace my film SLR with the Digital SLR few months down the line. Although my present digital camera is perfectly suitable for this kind of experiment having most of the controls that one would need to accomplish the job.

How about you posting the sample you talked about?

[Raje]

Ha, those were made years ago!!!!, But I will look, I may still have one or two......
You are correct with the failure rate. One roll of film may take DAYS/WEEKS to fill up depending on how much detail you imploy. But I'd say out of a roll of 27 you get maybe 3-4 decent shots, and 1 good one(to be quite honest its all guess work). Luckily for me, it was high school photo, so we rolled our own film, making custom 30 shot rolls... but all shots were actually in black and white-cost reasons.....If I can't find the ones I described I will attempt new ones in color--- my Pentax SLR is probably covered in dust.... but you've inspired me

OH YEA--- A cool little trick for Macro shots(super close up for those who don't follow photo) on a film SLR, unlock the lens and flip it backwards and hold it in place-- gives an almost fish eye lens look.