My Old Watch

[407370]

I set myself a task of getting good pics of my watch using only daylight and light modifiers.
The basic setup:

Watch sitting on a Nikkor lens dust cover. Nikon Z8 + MC 105MM. Settings ISO 64 / F7.1 + 1/80th SHUTTER SPEED.

Light modifiers:

Various colour cards + flashlight + silver paper and a few clips to steady the cards.

First Test pic

So from this I knew I was going to need to Focus Stack as there was no way I could open the field of view wide enough to cover even half the watch.
I also noted the extra bright reflection from the watch face. I knew this would have to be dealt with.

The black card had the desired effect. Wonder how much would change with the Orange card:

I was very surprised at how significant the colour of the card is in this circumstance.

After a lot of testing of Focus Shift settings, I settled on 20 exposures with 3 point separation between the exposures. As there was no flash involved I set the delay to zero.

I deliberately composed to allow a vertical and horizontal presentation.

Helicon Focus on the "C" setting did a grand job. Outputted a TIFF and converted to JPG with no other editing except sizing for this forum.

I setup the camera to take RAW + JPG so I created one of the following from RAW and one from JPG. See if you can tell which is which. Helicon took about 1/10th of the time to process JPG as it took to process the same number of RAW files.:

Horizontal:

Vertical

Its an old watch and I did not even attempt to clean it as I liked the worn patina.

All comments welcome.

CHEERS
JBO

 

[Woolsocks]

Grime and dirt. Take a picture so you can see the time?

 

[407370]

Grime and dirt. Take a picture so you can see the time?

As this is a Focus Stack that would be a bit of work. Basically do a finished stack then superimpose a single frame of just the face. Then colour match.

Not going to happen.

CHEERS
JBO

 

[Rickbb]

Nice write up, I like seeing how something was done. Too many times we just see, (and present), the final result.

 

[Woolsocks]

As this is a Focus Stack that would be a bit of work. Basically do a finished stack then superimpose a single frame of just the face. Then colour match.

Not going to happen.

CHEERS
JBO

LOL. No I mean: The watch face is so dirty you can't see it with the naked eye. Soooo you have to take a picture and on your monitor zoom in to see the time on the watch!!!!!!!! Ha ha ha ha.

 

[denum]

Thanks for the write up. I picked up a few clues. Well done.

 

[Politically Incorrect]

Cool watch

You've inspired me... I'll start a "Shoot Your Watch"
Thread".