A Calculated Risk

[Wirefox]

Always striving to get things as sharp as possible I was pleasantly surprised with the softening effect provided by turing up the threshold on the de-noise function in my raw editor. I would appreciate some thoughts on this. And yes after a short stray into seaside pics I am back with the mundane I'm afraid

[cneedha]

No criticism, just questions- what did you place the calculator on and how did you make the background disappear?

Great shot!

[Wirefox]

cneedha

The calculator is sitting on an old shelf that was amongst my "that may come in handy one day" collection. It is coated in very high black gloss version of what used to be known as formica. I slightly tilted the shelf so the back slope acted as a background and held the calculator in place with blu-tac. Brace yourself...the disappearing background is even more high tech. Basically it is under exposure. From memory the room is darkened by closing curtains, camera is set to f8 with a 200th second shutter. The speedlight is taken off camera (-2 stop FEC) and pointed at the front left and about at the same height as the object aboust 3 feet away. Speedlight is Hand held because my ETTL cord is only long enough to strangle a sparrow. Thats about it. There is an obvious problem with purposely under exposing the subject since noise starts to appear on the parts of the object that are not lit well enough with the speedlight (hence the softening with de-noise function in the raw converter).

Oh to get a uniform black for the background open levels in photoshop (or GIMP in my case) take the black dropper and apply to the darkest part of the background. Click the droper again until you get the required black saturation.

Phew...sorry that was so long winded

Steve

Similar theme but with a kids slinky. You can see the noise issue more with these.

[cneedha]

Steve,
Thanks for the explanation. I took a similar shot of a sake jar using the dining room table at 11pm, camera set on timer and me standing in the background with a black raincoat
Chris

[Wirefox]

Chris

Very nice composition and exposure. I think photographers must be some of the most inventive types around. I would never have thought of the black raincoat and timer though. I sometimes use coloured art card at A0 size for smaller compositions it is cheap and you can use the white card as a really effective reflector.

Steve

[joec]

Chris

Very nice composition and exposure. I think photographers must be some of the most inventive types around. I would never have thought of the black raincoat and timer though. I sometimes use coloured art card at A0 size for smaller compositions it is cheap and you can use the white card as a really effective reflector.

Steve

Steve, et al., something I once used for macro shots of flora was to hold a piece of black velvet behind the subject after metering off the subject itself. This gives a very black background even outdoors in sunlight.