obsidian arrowhead C&C?
JC
Registered Users Posts: 768 Major grins
Trial run of an arrowhead shot. Final shot needs to be this weekend.
I was hoping to back light this artifact, but there is too much of a thickness gradient from the center to edge, and any light strong enough to make a sufficient area transparent blew out the edges. I'll try with a fiber optic cable this weekend. (it's exactly one inch from top to bottom)
It needs to dominate an 8 1/2 x 11 page at printing resolution, say 250-300 dpi. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I could magnify the object with my canon 100mm (non L) macro.
I can go to a smaller aperture, but even then, there's a lot of surficial topography, so I think the final will need to be a layer stack.
I'm trying to decide if I need a third light on the bottom, or if that shadow detail adds needed depth. The flood light on the right is not diffused enough, I see, I'll try to improve on that, I do want the strongest light coming from upper left.
background preferences? Anything else I need to work out before trying the final shot? I know the edges are rough, I was just roughly testing out different backgrounds.
1) jpg compression seems to have destroyed the gradient
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I was hoping to back light this artifact, but there is too much of a thickness gradient from the center to edge, and any light strong enough to make a sufficient area transparent blew out the edges. I'll try with a fiber optic cable this weekend. (it's exactly one inch from top to bottom)
It needs to dominate an 8 1/2 x 11 page at printing resolution, say 250-300 dpi. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I could magnify the object with my canon 100mm (non L) macro.
I can go to a smaller aperture, but even then, there's a lot of surficial topography, so I think the final will need to be a layer stack.
I'm trying to decide if I need a third light on the bottom, or if that shadow detail adds needed depth. The flood light on the right is not diffused enough, I see, I'll try to improve on that, I do want the strongest light coming from upper left.
background preferences? Anything else I need to work out before trying the final shot? I know the edges are rough, I was just roughly testing out different backgrounds.
1) jpg compression seems to have destroyed the gradient
2)
3)
4)
Yeah, if you recognize the avatar, new user name.
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Brian v.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lordv/
http://www.lordv.smugmug.com/
A white background is typically used for cataloging these samples, but any background can be used for an artistic rendering.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
If I'm wrong, good.
Thanks, I think that's the consensus here too, aesthetically, would it look unbalanced to have the gradient reversed? I like the 'heavy' black at the bottom, but that makes less contrast with the less lit part of the arrowhead.
Thanks, I got a lot of advice in the previous threads that I tried to implement. We're going for 'artistic illustration'.
Not wrong, the blue background is the original, just heavily smoothed to get rid of scratches and cat hair that were persistent on the acrylic support - i intend the final shot in a clean room
You may want to try backing off and cropping in if you're worried about diffraction... it can be better for some subjects just to back off and get it all without diffraction rather than getting closer, if the resolution is enough. Diffraction mainly kills fine lines and stuff like hairs etc. If there isn't a ton of micro detail, diffraction won't hurt it too much since you can do sharpening in post and it'll recover most of it. It won't give you any problems with the edges since its a very defined and distinct line that can easily be sharpened.
I'd experiment with both backing off and stacking. Then you can weigh whether the time to stack is worth it or not over the easier way, at least for this type of thing. For bugs, its definitely worth stacking. For a fairly slick rock, probably not so much and stopping down or backing off would be most efficient.
the lens is 1x- but printing out at about 5 inches? thats effectively 5x magnification. I'm impressed my camera and lens could do it.
Final versions- focus stacked. I discovered by raising the arrowhead up farther from the background, and bouncing more light off the background, I could get a semi-transparent edge. The fiber optic backlighting was a bust, although, in individual pictures, I could see a lot of detail in small parts. I also had to move the sheet I was using as a light diffuser (very low rent set-up) farther away, since if I disturbed it between focus shots, it changed the reflections, and in doing that I lost the silvery sheen from the first set, but 'the author' of the paper this will illustrate likes the more faithful rendition of the black surface. I'm still not 100% happy with the specular reflections, but they do add needed depth now that I've lost a lot of the surface detail the silvery reflections gave it.
Any last C&C before submitting these to the editor? I still had to heavily edit the backgrounds, so I can easily change details there.
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