2011 NEW TOYS

Sorry everyone, I've been away for a bit up north. I had a chance to visit some places a little out of scooter range with the camera. I thought I'd get back with some nice shots of the local attractions but nothing much turned out :-(

I had my Sigma 10 – 20 (Man I hate that lens and wish I had bought the real Canon version) and did most of my shooting with that. It lacks the Image Stabilization feature and has terrible chromatic aberration for distant objects. For a wide angle you would think you would get decent DOF but you don't, or at least I don't (I think mine must be a lemon).

Anyway, most of the shots I took were in the shade so I had to shoot wide open to avoid having camera shake and next to nothing came out with decent focus on infinity. Bummer.

To the point; I have been using one of those $20 special tripods because I'm cheap and I didn't even have that with me. The damn thing blows in the wind and wiggles all over the place. So I went out and blew the big bucks on a Manfrotto 190XPROB with the 804RC2 Head Kit for $259.89 tax included. This sucker is strong. You could prop up a house on it.

Now I'm a newbie at product photography. With table top stuff you get to tweak and improvise to your hearts content as I am known for. With product photography you are expected to present the product as it really is but you can play around with lights and staging without breaking the rules. I thought I'd give it a try.

This is the beast…

I wanted to shoot it before it got scratched up or anything. What I tried for was even lighting on the length of the legs, no noticeable sharpening, an interesting and complimentary backdrop, accurate saturation and an "I want that" presentation.

The things I know I missed are 1) the horizon line of the shooting floor has a curve 2) the centre post is visible but not visible enough 3) I should have cropped it better so I would have a better place to put the name of the product 4) I should have adjusted the lighting on the one twist lever so the name was readable.

One strange thing about this tripod is the centre leg does not match the other two legs. I can only assume it is a boy.

Any tips any of my Pro Flickr friends can give me would be appreciated.

~~~

And Iris was kind enough to add this short ditty:

so strong it may be
to keep the camera sturdy
didn't know tripods had a sex
and were even that complex
sure men have three legs
and women lay eggs
but that may be out of context

© 2009 Iris Zuares

Then she added this :-)

chris & randi:

something macho is being shown
like comparing tripods that you own
it's down to one vital message that i see
you both are suffering from tripod envy

© 2009 Iris Zuares

Made Explore

Strobist: Single strobe with grid, stand mounted, camera right behind subject pointed down. Strobe is very close to subject just out of frame.

This shot was taking in a white room with sunlight beaming through large windows so it was extremely bright. Strobist says that with enough light you can turn white walls black. I still have at least 1 stop wiggle room to reduce the exposure of his head but the detail in the flooring would have been lost.

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