11-07-07 – It’s About Time

Anything that measures time would be acceptable, I would think. Lots of possibilities.

U-man had asked what I meant when I said I “hi-keyed” the watch images to get it to look more like platinum. I don’t know if “hi-key” can be “verbed”, but basically, I over-exposed the image to wash out any non-white colors. That gives the metal a silvery look. I did the same sort of thing to the erasers that I took for the “Everything for a Dollar” theme.

Here is a sampling of the images I took for this theme, with the exposure information (ISO 400 for all)

By schnee, shot with Canon EOS 5D at 2007-11-08. 1/100s @ f/32

By schnee, shot with Canon EOS 5D at 2007-11-06. 1/100s @ f/13

By schnee, shot with Canon EOS 5D at 2007-11-06. 1/200s @ f/10

By schnee, shot with Canon EOS 5D at 2007-11-06. 1/200s @ f/9

By schnee, shot with Canon EOS 5D at 2007-11-06. 1/200s @ f/4.

I chose the 2nd from the bottom for display. In the top three, one can see a little bit of red in the shadow behind the watch – that came from the light being reflected from the eraser I used to prop-up the watch (a LEGO assisted as well). As I cranked up the exposure (pushing the histogram to the right), that red got washed out. The middle image (f/10 @1/200) is pretty close to how my eye sees the watch in most viewing conditions. I had considered the bottom image, but ultimately decided it was too abstract. I was really attracted to the completely washed out background and my next attempt along these lines will be to get a completely white background with a well-exposed subject. I may need to throw some direct light at the background to do that.

This set-up had the main light coming in from camera-left and slightly behind the subject. Camera-right was a piece of paper used as a reflector to illuminate the watch dial. The paper is reflected in the dial and appears as a curved white swath along the right edge.

My macro “studio” is about to get hacked up a bit – I need a light port to camera right, and I need better flexibility of the light positioning to camera left.