Tried to improve lighting on new set of macro candy shots... C&C please...

[jedirunner]

Ok, so I worked on the lighting (my first time using off-camera wireless flash -- 580EX II controlled wireless by 7D, and 2 cheap lamps directed towards a backdrop rather than the subject). I think these turned out far better than yesterday's shots (in this thread).

No post-processing other than sizing and/or cropping the jogs.

Please CC, be honest, be brutal. What's good? What's bad? What should have been tried differently?

1. Another M&M photo, this time with different lighting than yesterday.


2.


3.


4.


5.


Thanks for any comments, suggestions, etc.

Kevin

 

[mjhoward]

Your WB is better but these are all underexposed.

EDIT: I just saw you were using a strobe now. You should start out with just the strobe and ditch the continuous lights. You're going to have at least two different colors of light and you can only WB for one temperature and that will just add to the difficulty in learning. THe other thing is that if used right, the single strobe will be plenty to light something like this. How were you using the strobe? Did you have it pointed directly at the candy or were you bouncing? Did you use any sort of diffuser? For subjects this small, you can easily make a DIY diffuser out of cardboard and paper or other things. Here is one I made that works pretty well for macro and cost me pretty much nothing:

 

[jedirunner]

Your WB is better but these are all underexposed.

I agree, but I'd like to hear why you think they're underexposed (I have my own "gut feel" on them, but nothing objective to look at that would help me while shooting). Which things do you look at to gauge underexposed vs. normal or over-exposed?

Thanks,

Kevin

 

[mjhoward]

^ I added to my original post some extra info that might help you learn. BTW, one easy way to tell these are underexposed is that the whites are gray... some are dark grey. Also, when you play around with the Speedlight, try setting your WB manually to around 5000K.

 

[rexbobcat]

The last photo is brighter than the others, and seems better exposed.

 

[jedirunner]

^ I added to my original post some extra info that might help you learn. BTW, one easy way to tell these are underexposed is that the whites are gray... some are dark grey. Also, when you play around with the Speedlight, try setting your WB manually to around 5000K.

Gotcha. Will try that.

As for the lighting, I was aiming the speedlite at various places, bouncing to see the effect it gave in different directions, but i wasn't really diffusing at all. Next time I'll kill the constant light and just use the speedlite diffused. Once diffused, would you have aimed the speedlite at the candy or bounce it?

Thanks again, I appreciate the feedback and tips.

Kevin

 

[jedirunner]

The last photo is brighter than the others, and seems better exposed.

Yeah, now that I get an idea of what to look for, I can see some of the whites are actually approaching white, rather than being gray like the other photos. The whole photo does look better.

Thanks,

Kevin

 

[KmH]

I agree, but I'd like to hear why you think they're underexposed (I have my own "gut feel" on them, but nothing objective to look at that would help me while shooting). Which things do you look at to gauge underexposed vs. normal or over-exposed?

The histogram on the back of the camera.......Understanding Digital Camera Histograms: Tones and Contrast
Understanding Digital Camera Histograms: Luminosity and Color

 

[Tony S]

Bounce your light off of something that is much closer to the candies, either a white wall or a piece of white poster board. This will give you a larger light source and will take care of some of the small specular highlights you are getting in the candies. If I were setting up for this, I would have the reflector almost right on top of the candies just out of the camera view with the flash below to bounce up into it. This should also soften some of the shadows but not completely get rid of them.

 

[jedirunner]

I agree, but I'd like to hear why you think they're underexposed (I have my own "gut feel" on them, but nothing objective to look at that would help me while shooting). Which things do you look at to gauge underexposed vs. normal or over-exposed?

The histogram on the back of the camera.......Understanding Digital Camera Histograms: Tones and Contrast
Understanding Digital Camera Histograms: Luminosity and Color

Thanks for the links. I'll go through them and see what I can learn.

Bounce your light off of something that is much closer to the candies, either a white wall or a piece of white poster board. This will give you a larger light source and will take care of some of the small specular highlights you are getting in the candies. If I were setting up for this, I would have the reflector almost right on top of the candies just out of the camera view with the flash below to bounce up into it. This should also soften some of the shadows but not completely get rid of them.

Good idea. I'll try this next time around.

Kevin