Over the last week I’ve been playing around with mixtures. Mixtures of lighting: daylight, tungsten, and spot lighting of various sorts. Mixtures of macro equipment: extension bellows, macro lens, extension tubes, close-up filter, normal lens. I’ve applied these mixtures in a variety of ways to the flowers in this story.
Mixed light is interesting in post-processing. Since the color of light in a digital photograph can be controlled (in one way by re-setting the white balance), the color of a light source seems less important than in film photography. But the qualitytand intensity of the light do still matter: a dully lit photo will not inspire emotional response in a viewer.
Said flowers, by the way, come from Trader Joe’s. I’d say they were variegated gladiolas, and I think they are, but I’m not quite sure because they look mostly like glads, but not quite.
Certainly, they’ve been a lovely subject for trial and error and experimentation. Which is what digital photography is largely about for me.
All photos in this round-up were exposed at ISO 200. The photo at the beginning of this story was taken with my 105mm macro and a 12mm extension tube at f/40 with an exposure of 1.6 seconds.
This photo was taken manually with a PB-6 extension bellows and the macro lens:
Very Close (blog story featuring this photo).
This photo was taken with my 105mm macro lens mounted on a 36mm extension tube and a +4 close-up filter at f/36 for 3 seconds.
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The photo of backlit flower petals below was taken with my 105mm macro lens, 12mm extension tube, +4 close-up filter, at f/40 and 2 seconds.
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The last photo (below) was taken with my 18-200 zoom lens at 70mm (105mm in 35mm terms) with a +4 close-up lens, f/32 at 1 second.
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