Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Exercise 4.14 - Shiny surfaces

For this exercise I had to experiment with a shiny subject. I have chosen a silver color mirror as a subject, black box for the background, tripod, macro lens Tamron 90mm and a tracing paper fixed in the form of cone on the lens. I also used LED torch for lighting.

The first shot I took with a light next to the camera, without any additional tools.

90mm; f/3.2; 1/5 sec; ISO 200

The result was amazingly bad. Image was definitely overexposed and the black background does not seem to be black at all.

Then I fixed a tracing paper on the lens, so that the wide part was sitting around the object and was not seen in viewfinder and took some pictures with light at different angles, adjusting the exposure. 

The first two have been taken with the same exposure as the first one. The light was placed on the right side. The black is still not black, and there is nothing interesting in this shot at all.

90mm; f/3.2; 1/5 sec; ISO 200

90mm; f/3.2; 1/5 sec; ISO 200

The next four shots have been taken with slight variations of lighting angle and experimenting with exposure.
f/5.6; 1/15 sec

f/3.5; 1/5 sec

f/3.5; 1/5 sec


f/3.5; 1/5 sec

As it is seen, slightly changing angles of light, it is possible to influence the reflection of the subject and the background. On some of shots it is darker than on other shots. 

Also, what I found quite complicated in this exercise was focusing on the subject.

Using the tracing paper on the lens is a good techniques, when it is needed to highlight some reflection or suppress some of the tones, reflections or avoid unnecessary shadows. The angle of the light is also important, as on any other picture. 

Out of all shots I liked the one taken at f/5.6 the most. I think, it gives the best depth of field and the best combination of reflection and background. 

No comments:

Post a Comment