- Joined
- Mar 8, 2011
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- 25,393
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- Iowa
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All evening, I've been working on a simple image: Holding a newly-lit match 'in the dark'.
Trust me........... It ain't as easy as it sounds.
First off, I don't have a studio, so I had to wait until well after sunset to get a dark area... in this case: my kitchen. I hung a black felt blanket over the cabinet doors to create a black background.
I set the camera up on a tripod, pre-focused and set to manual. I taped the side of the box of matches to the countertop just outside the FOV so I could strike the match with one hand and move it into view. I lit a match, moved my hand to what I felt was within the FOV, used a corded release.......... and hoped for the best.
My first attempts were total crap. The flame was 50% washed out while my hand hardly registered. I tried HDR, but that just turned the background a noisy gray while making my hand look like it's in broad daylight.
Hmmm.
Maybe using shutter speed to expose the flame and a flash to expose my hand........
So I put my SB600 8' away about 110° to the left of the camera, set to 1/64th power. Too much light! So I laid a couple white paper towels over it. Now I was getting somewhere!
It took me about 20 shots to figure out the right combination of ISO (100) shutter (1/125th) and aperture (f/18) to get the OCF to 'match' the flame.
A little bit of PP cropping, adding a bit of yellow to my hand (WB was set to Flash and my hand was too 'pink'), and I've got really close what I had in my mind throughout the day.
Not exactly what I call a prize-winner, but more like a personal technical achievement (despite the smoke detectors going off!
).
Trust me........... It ain't as easy as it sounds.
First off, I don't have a studio, so I had to wait until well after sunset to get a dark area... in this case: my kitchen. I hung a black felt blanket over the cabinet doors to create a black background.
I set the camera up on a tripod, pre-focused and set to manual. I taped the side of the box of matches to the countertop just outside the FOV so I could strike the match with one hand and move it into view. I lit a match, moved my hand to what I felt was within the FOV, used a corded release.......... and hoped for the best.
My first attempts were total crap. The flame was 50% washed out while my hand hardly registered. I tried HDR, but that just turned the background a noisy gray while making my hand look like it's in broad daylight.
Hmmm.
So I put my SB600 8' away about 110° to the left of the camera, set to 1/64th power. Too much light! So I laid a couple white paper towels over it. Now I was getting somewhere!
It took me about 20 shots to figure out the right combination of ISO (100) shutter (1/125th) and aperture (f/18) to get the OCF to 'match' the flame.
A little bit of PP cropping, adding a bit of yellow to my hand (WB was set to Flash and my hand was too 'pink'), and I've got really close what I had in my mind throughout the day.
Not exactly what I call a prize-winner, but more like a personal technical achievement (despite the smoke detectors going off!
).
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/31/31086-ae0d6678ca78859132ce5375d5300961.jpg?1734159204)
