Week 6 Micro

This week I decided to use all the DIY studio gear I brought all the way down to Missouri by doing some micro photography. I clamped my compact florescent lights around found something to use as a background and started shooting. I was also playing around with using my 50mm prime lens as a tilt shift by holding it infront of the camera and moving it around. I had seen Becca do this at the wedding I shadowed her on and wanted to experiment with it myself. It took a little getting used to and there was defiantly some light finding its way in through the gap but it was really neat to be able to change where the in focus line went. The photograph below is the best example I was able to make with my makeshift tilt shift lens. As you can see the plane of focus is diagonal to the frame instead of horizontal like it would have been with the lens in its normal attached position. Unfortunately since I have to hold the lens separate from the camera I can't use a tripod and it si really hard to get the focus right so this photograph is not supper sharp but not bad for my first attempt. 

The photograph above I got really excited about. I decided I wanted to find food stuff to photograph really close and just happened to find an onion and lemon both cut in half making very neat designs. By now I had moved on from the tilt shifting and was using my extension tubes to get up close and personal. I really liked the rings on the onion and enjoyed the challenge of lighting it so that each and every ring was identifiable without blowing out or leaving dark any part of the onion. I ended up using two main lights at a sharp angle on ether side with one slightly brighter than the other so as to create some shadows and contrast. Then I had a third light below the camera to fill the dark underside. I also tried to line my sensor plane up with the plane of the onion so everything would be in equal focus which if I had a better tilt shift lens I would have had more flexibility with.