Wine: High-End Shiraz

[Mike Buckley]

Three months ago I posted this image of the wine shown below. I was anticipating enjoying the wine in December with friends but they had to postpone until last weekend.

This is my first time drinking a wine from Elderton's Command brand. I've never had a better Shiraz. One of my friend's eyes literally got big as she took her first sip of the wine. Better yet, I still have the unopened bottle shown below.

Setup
The background is copper-colored paper with a semi-metalic fiinish. The tabletop is glass. A medium continuous-light lamp on the right was positioned in the same direction as the bottle with very little light directly spilling onto the scene. A white reflector on the left side adds a reflection to that side of the bottle. A reflector coincidentally the color of red wine on the right front side was used mostly to throw more light onto the background.

[Sam W]

This is beautiful photo Mike, I think the burgundy color of the background works great in the composition. The only minor thing that catches my eye is that the bottle appears to be leaning slightly to the right while the wine glass appears more vertical. It may be an optical illusion.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, guys!

Sam: You were right about the slight tilt to the right. I had thought it was tilted all along but when I checked the alignment of the source and reflection apparently the display size I used was too small to be accurate. Once I saw your comment, I checked that alignment again, this time at a larger display size, and confirmed that the alignment had been off. I replaced the image with the corrected version. Thanks for bringing that to my attention!

[NorthernFocus]

Nice one, Mike. The OOF glass in the BG is genius. Well done.

[Sam W]

Looks awesome now!

[LePetomane]

Very nice. What were your settings?

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, everyone!

What were your settings?

35mm lens on a 1.5 crop camera
Auto Focus (I usually use manual focus when doing studio photography but it would be too boring and unhelpful to explain why this was an exception.)
Aperture Priority
ISO 100
f/4
Whatever the shutter speed was; I don't know as I didn't manually set it and haven't looked it up. I only know that it was the result of using +0.33 exposure compensation applied to what the meter determined using matrix metering.

To expand on that, keep in mind that the only really helpful information is to know that I used the camera's base ISO, which is always preferable when it is also practical. The other bit of information to know that is perhaps a little helpful is the aperture. Even so, it's not very helpful because the aperture setting on its own is irrelevant because you don't know (and I also don't know) the distance of the subject, wine glass and background from the camera.

You're new here, Paul, so I wonder if you know that you should be able to look up the EXIF data of images that are posted here so long as the data isn't stripped from the image file. (It should be in all of my files.) One method is to right click the image and download it to your computer. You can then use your software to look up the EXIF data. The other method is to install a plug-in to your browser that allows you to look up the EXIF data without having to download the image file to your computer.

[Wavelength]

Very nice image

[bnnrcn]

The bottle looks elegant and the image looks beautiful

[Kaye Leggett]

Another classic. I am interested that you have left in the slight flare half way down on right of the label. I would probably have tried to get rid of it, but I know you have intentionally put it there. I also love the glass positioning - it takes a second look as to whether there is wine in it or not; very clever.

[Mike Buckley]

Continued thank you to all!

Kay: It would be more accurate to say that I intentionally left the flare there that you mentioned rather than that I intentionally put it there. It was an accidental surprise to see that it was produced; I would never have tried to intentionally produce it because I didn't think it could have been produced. Once I saw that it could be produced, I tried making the image with and without it and felt that the image was better with it because the romantic characteristic is consistent with the rest of the scene. However, if the flare had occurred in a less attractive position, I probably would have made the image without it.

As I write this, it occurs to me that I never thought of trying a small aperture to see if a starburst would have been produced. Even if that had happened, I probably would not have used it because I envisioned so strongly that the scene would have all of the appearances that go with using a fairly large aperture.

[LePetomane]

Mike,

Thanks for the tips.