Experiments with Flash and Color

So I was up late the other night, or should I say morning, and I started futzing around with my flashes and camera’s to see what I could come up with. First problem to solve was just what exactly was I going to shoot? Hmmmm. Everyone’s in bed sleeping so I don’t suspect they’ll want to help out. The dogs?? Well let’s not get into the dogs right now but if you know anyone who wants two slightly used dogs….

What to shoot, what to shoot.

I got it I’ll take a photograph of my camera!!!

“How?” you ask.

With a camera of course...

Silly.

Ok so now I know what I’m going to shoot how on earth I am going to make some photo of a dumb camera interesting.

COLOR!!!!

or

colour

depending on what side of the pond your on

So it’s a little more than just color. Here’s how I did it.

First the setup. I read on another blog that anyplace can be used as a studio so taking that advice to hart I set things up in my family room. Good thing everyone was asleep, hahhh.

Pictured here is the setup of the subject camera and flash.

As you can see the flash is on a stand directly over the camera. Taped to the flash head is a color gel and then the sto-fen is placed over the head to soften the light.

Note the black piece of illustration board taped to the book case behind the camera. The only reason for that was to eliminate any glare reflecting off the glass from the flash. It had nothing to do with the black background in the photo. More on that later.

Across the room I have the camera setup.

Goodness that room must be huge for you to use such a large lens.
Naaaaaa, it just happens to be the lens that gave me the sharpest and most consistent look while shooting the series. The camera is at most 10 feet away from the camera… wait a minute… shouldn’t that be the camera is only 10 feet away from the cam… oh never mind.

Note the lighting in the room. That is exactly how the light was when I took the actual shots.

“No way” you say, “how did you get the background so black?”

Exposure my friend… it’s all done with the exposure.

Basically I set the aperture at f/8 to make sure our DoF was enough to keep all of the camera in focus. Then pumped up the shutter speed way up to under expose the background. Simple as that. Absolutely no Photoshop was used to darken or remove distractions in the background.

Once the setup and technique were worked out all that remained was to change the color gel and take a few shots.
Here is the final resulting composite (which was done in photoshop.)