Rodney Campbell's Blog

Whilst we were staying with my parents at my childhood home recently I continued my exercise in small scale light painting of natural world seeds and seed pods

My mother has this fabulous collection of these in some baskets and I took the opportunity to try some of them out – here are some of my favourites

Enveloped

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 134.00 sec at f/32, ISO 100

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer.
To recap I’ve got my subject securely in position using a Wimberly plamp with my camera and macro lens on a tripod pointing at my subject with a bulb mode remote controller

I darken the room (turn off the lights) and with just a single small LED torch with some black gaffer tape wrapped around the head to allow me to more finely control the light and limit any spill I set about light painting my subjects during a long exposure

For all of these I’ve had to stop down quite some way f/32 to gain enough depth of field with the subjects so close and at times quite deep. I know this sounds like I’m also deep into sharpness and detail robbing diffraction territory (and it is) but honestly it isn’t anywhere near as bad as most people make it out to be and I’d much rather the depth of field in this case than a slight loss in sharpness. Shooting so closed down also has another useful effect – it helps to counteract any ambient light (esp any stray light) and allows for a longer exposure giving me more time to paint with light

Clover

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 117 sec at f/32, ISO 100

Five

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 118.00 sec at f/32, ISO 100

This one was interesting because I couldn’t use the plamp to hold this one so I needed some flat surface to put it on so it could stand up. I was hoping the top surface of my dad’s inkject printer/scanner (which was black and glossy) might do the trick and add some cool reflections – it did

Sharks Teeth

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 121.00 sec at f/32, ISO 100

Nine

NIKON D600 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 93 sec at f/32, ISO 100

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