Shooting Outdoor Close-Ups in Dark

Technique to separate main subject from busy background.

Few days ago I was shooting blossoms of our peach tree but I wasn’t entirely happy with the outcome – the background was way too busy. Cutting one branch and bring it in the studio wasn’t an option and neither was placing some background behind the branch with blossoms. One fool-proof option opened to me was to wait till dusk and shoot with flash. And that is exactly what I did and results were not bad at all. I know that I should have used tripod but this was more about technique then producing a book quality image. It is too late now to re-shoot the peach blossoms, they are way past their prime, but I will use this technique for more outdoor projects where I want to separate main subject from the background.

 

Original image shot in RAW, 100 ISO, 1/125 sec @f/5.6, auto-focus with pre-flash assist, off camera E-TTL flash with prism lens and diffuser, 1^st curtain, Flash Exposure (FE) -1 stop. For razor sharp image I would have to use tripod and strong light for focusing.

During RAW conversion to JPEG I adjusted levels and blacks so that background was more or less black.

After conversion I opened the image in Photoshop and cloned away the remaining background. Then I cropped and tilted the image. I was left with just a peach branch with blossoms against black background. Total time spent in Lightroom4 and Photoshop was less than 10 minutes.

More Closeup and Macro Photos

Hollyhock Seed

Nasturtium Seed

Another Snowflake 

 Center of Crown of Thorn flower

The closeup image is inside the white circle.

Photographing Vegetable Seeds

As I was fruitlessly waiting for another snowfall so that I could improve my technique to shoot individual snowflakes I was wondering what else I could photograph with my macro setup. As luck would have it I spotted vegetable seeds packets that were out on table for indoor planting next week. I have never looked at seeds from really close so I was blown away how colorful some are. In order to get decent magnification I used 21mm and 31mm extension tubes and for light I used Minolta 4 tubes ring flash with only left tube turned on.

Thai Chilli seed

Red Pepper seed

Red Radish seed

 

The setup.

Photographing Individual Snowflakes

I have finally managed to photograph individual snowflakes with DSLR camera. Years ago I have made nice images with my old Minolta attached to microscope but microscope just doesn’t work all that well with my Canon EOS, I don’t know why. For these shots I was using Minolta 50mm 1:1 macro lens with MD/EOS adapter ring and 2X macro extender, focusing rail, off-camera Speedlite in manual mode and heavy-duty Manfrotto tripod. Aperture, shutter speed and focusing were all manual. For capturing the snowflakes I used black steel chalkboard that was cooled down for few minutes in a freezer and then placed in open area on the deck. When I had few snowflakes on chalkboard I placed it under the lens that was already pre-focused. This way I had to do only minimal re-focusing when I moved the board around. As you can see on picture of my setup, it was 0°C (32°F) when I took my shots and shortly after the snow turned to rain. We have very un-usual winter here in Southern Ontario, not too many opportunities to play around with this technique.

Very wet snow.

All snowflake pictures were shot @ ISO 100, f/11@1/200, Speedlite flash with difuser@1/2 power. Macro lens extender pushed the aperture to f/22

Strawberry Drop Set-Up

Foundation of my set-up for this shot was my home made light tent frame. I build it from CPVC 1/2” water tubing and several elbows and “T” fittings and use it for almost all of my indoor close-up shots.

For this particular shot two things are very critical: focus and target. In order to have the main subject as sharp as possible I had to construct sort of scaffolding where I could clamp target that was about the same size as strawberry and as close to location in water as possible.

To do that I have tied steel nut to a string and then lowered it into wine glass. When focusing was done I have raised the nut to a location about 5” above the surface of water. This gave me precise spot from where I would drop the strawberry. It must be dropped from exact same spot every time. I dropped the strawberry from directly underneath the nut, it actually came in the contact with the nut.

In order for strawberry to stand out you will need strong but filtered backlight. I used Vivitar 285 flash triggered by radio and I was strobing through prismatic Plexiglas and diffuser screen. I didn’t try it but I think that you can use white bed sheet and strong spot light or table lamp for the back light. It is worth to experiment with.

The black strips on side of wine glass were created with 2 pieces of black cardboard placed at angle behind and to the side of the glass. You just have to move it around for your desired effect.

The main flash was placed to one side of camera and about half way between lens and glass. Since it was so close I filtered the flash with a sheet of toilet tissue. Again. The flash was triggered with radio.

Now that everything is set-up all you have to do is keep dropping! One more thing: don’t forget to clean the wine glass after every drop. Unwanted droplet of water on front or sides of the glass will ruin your perfectly timed shot. I am speaking from experience, been there, done that.

It can be very tedious but rewarding shoot. I ended up with 1 good shot for every 20 drops. Thanks heaven for digital photography!

Strobe Photography - More Fun with Camera

As I was surfing YouTube I came across interesting movie about photographing water droplets. Since I had everything needed for this specialised form of photography, generally called “strobing”, I just had to try it. I needed solid tripod, flash, radio strobe trigger set and lots of time on hand. The fact that I also have a light tent for close-ups was big advantage. Here are the results. Watch the video on YouTube to see how the set-up and focusing works.

In this shot I used Cloudy White Balance setting. Rest of the photographs were taken with Tungsten White Balance.

Canon Rebel T1i, Manual mode, 1/60 shutter, Macro lens 50mm 1:3.5 set at f/16 and 1:3 magnification, ISO 400, Yongnuo Digital flash YN468 at 1/16 power, Jianisi PT-04TM radio trigger, Cullmann 2904 tripod and head.

It is Nice to Have Indoor Hobbies

Today was a typical rainy, cold and windy day. No outdoor activities for me, no sir. Since I hardly watch any TV at all and I didn’t feel like reading even though I have 2 books and 2 magazines started, it left cooking and taking some indoor pictures. As far as cooking goes I made a load of pot-stickers for tonight’s meal and for freezer. That took over 3 hours and then it was camera’s turn. I love close-up and macro photography and I have all the equipment to do it so it was just a question of a subject. Close-ups of sandy or pebble beaches are always interesting and I do have a tiny pebble beach in our Japanese Garden but there was no way that I will crawl on wet ground and in the rain. There was only one solution: beach has to come inside. Piece of cake! Styrofoam plate used for packaged meat was base for my “beach”, spray water bottle provided the “rain” and my light-box finished the set-up. Yup, it is nice to have multiple hobbies! J

"Pebble Beach on Rainy Day."

Or, is it?

And here is the set-up. 2 fluorescent fill lights and 1 off camera TTL flash bouncing light from reflective top of the light box. f/22, 1/8 second, ISO 400, 55mm lens