Part 4. Light. Shiny Surfaces.

I purposely bought A3 tracing paper in a pad through Amazon UK,  and shipped it over in my hand luggage along with 200 black straws that I thought I would need to make a diffuser for my flash, after watching a link on utube months ago. The straws were loose in my hand luggage as the box they arrived in was so large...hoping and praying when coming through security they would not want me to open my suitcase.  Thankfully easy jet were lenient the day we flew in to Bordeaux...they are now stored away for a rainy day or a BBQ and drinks party, having not used the straws.  The tracing paper was not really large enough, therefore a blue peter moment arrived...taping and cutting, fixing to my lens only to find it restricted me when trying to put finishing touches to focusing.  Near on impossible when focus ring surrounded in paper. 
However secure and long the cone was I still got light in from the light through the doors.....I ditched all of yesterdays attempts and tried again today, whilst there was little or no sun. A little more successful but still not entirely happy.  Yesterday I started out with an egg cup and small spoon, today I used just the egg cup in the end as I could not stop the reflections on the spoon from the egg cup.  I now understand just how very difficult it is to get a reflection free image when shooting shiny surfaces. 
I chose to use black velvet as the base, after raiding my wardrobe, I found the perfect fabric in an evening skirt.  I shopped for black card and white card but was unlucky, I will try again at the weekend. 
Below are my results.

Fig 1.

This image was from the first days attempts, I chose to select the WB. to daylight, with a 18 - 105 lens.

Manual mode was selected with ISO 650 and shutter speed of 0.7 sec.

I am still able to see reflection in the spoon and on the egg cup, there is also the reflection on the bowl of the spoon from my lens., this shows itself as a small black spot.  The rings of the egg cup are reflected in the bowl too. 

The aperture was not small enough in this image to give a clear all image throughout, the edge of the end of the spoon is out of focus.

 

Fig 2

The same still life, and this time I used a speedlite flash, on my camera, to see what would happen if anything to the image. The light was softened and diffused by the paper cone, therefor there are very subtle if any changes.  The reflections remain the same as above.

 

 

Fig 3

Day 2 and a single item.  

60 mm lens

Hand selected white balance - Kelvin 4350

 I adjusted the aperture to F/16.0 and the shutter speed to 6 seconds.  I used an ISO of 125 and 60mm lens.  Thank goodness for shutter release cables.  I feel that this is a reasonably good effort after my struggles yesterday. With the cone attached to the lens I did struggle to fine tune my focusing.

 

 

Fig 4

Hand selected white balance - Kelvin 4350

60mm lens

Day 2 again, and this time I closed down the aperture to F/38.0. and a shutter speed of 30 secs.  The ISO remains the same. There is a faint dark line through the centre of both these images I guess that this is a reflection from the lens on each ring, unless one thinks to hang a translucent fabric between lens and subject... the lens will always be seen on the shiny surface when taken from above.  

 

 

I have realised from working on this exercise for two days, that my object that I chosen to use for Assignment 4 has one very shiny surface and I am going to have problems...with reflections from light. 

All the light I use when capturing this subject will have to be diffused to soften. Today before I put away the cone I placed my object on the black background minus the cone and the results show all the light and my reflection.. even though I lay the black base inside the light box.  I then proceeded to add the cone over lens and the results were vastly improved. 

May as yet use those straws and make a diffuser......