Posted by Nigel Blake on November 16, 2009 at 8:40 AM
Autumn leaves (C)
With the dreadful weather outside on Saturday I got around to doing some studio still life shots of autumn leaves, this is the simplest of all the compositions I did, however its my favourite one.
2009:11:14 17:13:45
Canon EOS 1DsMkIII Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro
Subject dist: 0.69m
1/100 sec, f/18
Mode: Manual
Metering: Evaluative
ISO: 100
AF mode: One-shot AF
Drive: Continuous (high)
White balance: Auto
Flash: External E-TTL, consisting of Canon MR14EX ringlite, 2X Canon 550EX slaved guns for additional fill bounced off a gold Lastolite reflector.
File size: 26.3MB
Image size: 5616 x 3744
Color space: AdobeRGB
Uncropped; RAW conversion DPP, followed by very slight levels adjust, resize and sharpen in CS3.
Posted by Tim Munsey on November 16, 2009 at 9:48 AM
Hi Nigel,
Lovely textures, almost metallic, nought wrong with simple (that's what I keep telling myself).
Tim
Posted by Phil Shaw on November 16, 2009 at 11:30 AM
Less is more as they say. Attractive colours and textures. I'm glad you told us that you used a gold reflector, as I would have been trying to work out how you got the plane leaf to pick up the metalic look that you've captured. Nice work.
Posted by Andy Shepherd on November 16, 2009 at 12:13 PM
Agree with Tim and Phil re the colours and textures, nice piece of work Nigel.
Andy..
Posted by Fran French on November 16, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Lovely textures in the leaves. Simple, but very effective. Nice one.
Sounds like quite a complex set-up with all those flashes. Worth the effort though as it's resulted in a very fine shot.
The detail and texture is great, as is the contrast in colours between the golden leaf and the cooler background one.
Posted by Nigel Blake on November 16, 2009 at 4:46 PM
Many thanks for the comments.
It wasn't really that complex to set-up, I had the leaves on a sheet of opal perspex on top of a clear plastic box, that in turn stood on the gold reflector it all acted like a lightbox; one flash being bounced off the reflector to backlight the leaves, the other to create the sidelighting and the ringflash providing the toplight fill, and then a bit of trial and error with the flash output combinations........ I got very carried away and shot several hundred images, a few more are on my Flickr pages.
Posted by Major Gilbert on November 16, 2009 at 4:46 PM
Very eye catching and that BG leaf looks like it was made from leather.
Good studio work Nigel.
Major.
Posted by Nigel Blake on November 16, 2009 at 4:50 PM
It really did look like leather, Major! I spent several hours selecting leaves for this series of images, I got some very odd looks from various people, especially a bunch of cyclists!
Posted by Ian Haskell on November 16, 2009 at 6:32 PM
The background leaf reminds me of rock and not leather. I don't know if you have seen detail shots from the Isle of Eigg in Scotland on Laig Bay but the underlying leaf reminds me of that type of structure. I would have been happy without the top leaf. Interesting and a bit different!
Discussion
13 repliesWith the dreadful weather outside on Saturday I got around to doing some studio still life shots of autumn leaves, this is the simplest of all the compositions I did, however its my favourite one.
2009:11:14 17:13:45
Canon EOS 1DsMkIII Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro
Subject dist: 0.69m
1/100 sec, f/18
Mode: Manual
Metering: Evaluative
ISO: 100
AF mode: One-shot AF
Drive: Continuous (high)
White balance: Auto
Flash: External E-TTL, consisting of Canon MR14EX ringlite, 2X Canon 550EX slaved guns for additional fill bounced off a gold Lastolite reflector.
File size: 26.3MB
Image size: 5616 x 3744
Color space: AdobeRGB
Uncropped; RAW conversion DPP, followed by very slight levels adjust, resize and sharpen in CS3.
Lovely textures, almost metallic, nought wrong with simple (that's what I keep telling myself).
Tim
Agree with Tim and Phil re the colours and textures, nice piece of work Nigel.
Andy..
Fran
Sounds like quite a complex set-up with all those flashes. Worth the effort though as it's resulted in a very fine shot.
The detail and texture is great, as is the contrast in colours between the golden leaf and the cooler background one.
It wasn't really that complex to set-up, I had the leaves on a sheet of opal perspex on top of a clear plastic box, that in turn stood on the gold reflector it all acted like a lightbox; one flash being bounced off the reflector to backlight the leaves, the other to create the sidelighting and the ringflash providing the toplight fill, and then a bit of trial and error with the flash output combinations........ I got very carried away and shot several hundred images, a few more are on my Flickr pages.
Good studio work Nigel.
Major.
Ian
Robert