IFLC Macro Photography Week 1 - Day 6

Tonight was time to put together a basic tabletop studio. It was just a couple desk lamps and some foam board. This allowed me to get some additional light into my shots. I'm still avoiding on and off camera flash for the practice shots for the class. The lamps definitely helped, but I could still use more. I was more stable for most of my shots and was able to use a slightly faster shutter speed tonight and that helped me get my shots a bit more in focus. All seven of these shots were taken using the tabletop studio.

Again I was using my macro lens for all my shots. I started at my minimum focus distance and had the aperture wide open. I was aiming for the focus inside the screw hole. So I slightly missed it, but essentially this is the shot I was going for.


I moved to another section of the computer component and kept the camera settings the same. This time I hit my focus point and got the shot I was going for.


I did try to use the on camera flash once. I closed the aperture down to f/18 and I took the same shot as last time. It was very underexposed, but has the potential for a cool shot.


I went back to no flash and the widest aperture. I tried to come up with a cool shot with the golf ball and started with this one. I'm not a fan. I hit the focus, but it's just a boring shot.


Keeping with the extremely narrow focus area, I ended with this shot. Now that I look at it, I would have preferred a slightly different composition. I guess the positive in this shot is that it shows the very narrow focus.


For this shot, I turned the white foam over and used the navy blue background. I was aiming to get the entire cover in focus at the most narrow depth of field. I deleted one shot that missed the focus that I know was at f/5. I ended up closing down to f/8 for this shot. I'm not sure why since I was aiming for f/5.


I tried the golf ball again with the darker background. I did close down to f/9 on this one because I wanted to get all of the Titleist in focus. Ideally I would have wanted to stop down even more to get the entire ball in focus, but that wasn't what I was practicing.


It was cool to use the extra light provided by the lamps. It would be more helpful if they were stronger and if I had one more lamp. Most of the shots were pretty dull and I think using an off camera flash for some of them could have helped a bit.