| Copyright © 2008 Josh Audette |
How I shot Object 15 a.k.a. frugal fotografy a.k.a. my red box notes are fancier than Flickr's
(1) El cheapo hotshoe-to-PC dongle. It fires the primary flash - see (9). The
cable and the two ends came to about $30 back when I got 'em.
(2) El cheapo optical slave trigger. It fires the secondary flash - see (7).
About $25.
(3) A plain white piece of paper. I stole it from a place I used to work. I
am such a thief.
(4) The, uh, subject. It gets a special red circle instead of a lame box.
It's a purple fake carabiner. I chose to use the "NOT" in "NOT FOR CLIMBING"
as the point of interest - it's a decent clue.
$2 for a pack of 2 at Home Depot (I think - it's been awhile).
(5) My favourite "macro" lens. It's an old OM Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 lens. It's on
an OM-to-Fourthirds adapter ring. I got this from Olympus for free - back in
the day when the Fourthirds standard was new, if you asked them nicely on the
second Thursday after a blue moon they might send you one if you got lucky, and
I did. The lens + adapter are on a 25mm extension tube that I found on a
LF/FS forum on a Fourthirds site, from a guy in downtown Ottawa in 2005.
(6) Proof that LCDs lie. The picture on the screen looks like it's
well-exposed. The histogram says it's under-exposed. Trust the histogram.
When I got this onto the computer, it really was very dark. The histogram does
not lie. The histogram is my friend.
(7) I got this Oly T-32 flash - along with the 28mm lens from (5) and a full
kit of OM stuff including an OM-2 camera - on eBay. I use it as my secondary
flash a lot.
The envelope it's sitting on was my el cheapo flag. How expensive it was
depends if you consider the bill that arrived within. I used the flash
handheld with this flag alongside to block the un-gelled light from hitting my
paper (2). Positioning was hard as the subject is very close to the lens and
the metal carabiner is quite specular.
(8) This is a soldering stand. You can see heat scars on the lower alligator
clip. It has played a role in 3 or 4 of these Every Day Object shoots.
(9) I don't have gels for my flashes, but I found an empty bag of President's
Choice enviro-friendly jumbo paper towels with the green I was looking for. I
cut the green text out and stuck it on my primary flash with the elastic from a
bundle of asparagus.
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This is one of the few times in the EDO game that everything went according to
plan. I went looking for interesting EDOs and saw the purple carabiner holding
a mini-tripod to a camera bag. I like the colour contrast of purple and green,
and I wanted to try lighting the background this way.
I had trouble finding a green background and was considering bouncing the flash
off of something green when I came across the PC paper towel bag. Once I found
that, it was fairly straightfoward.
It took a couple of test shots to get the angle and power of the primary flash
set well. The secondary flash's power was pretty low, since it's so close.
I forgot to copy the EXIF data to the file before I uploaded it, so here's the
important stuff:
Shutter: 1/125
Focal length: 28mm + 25 extension
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 100
Lessons?
(1) Next time, I'll cut a piece of paper to cup around the other side of the
lens in a U shape to get even lighting on the subject from the secondary flash.
(2) I'll also trust the histogram.
(3) Sometimes the enviro-friendly stuff is cheaper. Who'd 'a thunk it?
