Thank you for the kind words.... This was fun to shoot.
I poked around dgrin a bit and read up on how others had done it so I had some good starting points. The first shot out of the box was actually not far off from this one exposure-wise, so the settings provided were VERY close to put you in the ballpark if you want to try this yourself.
We played with a couple different rod sizes with differing results. Thicker rods at a given power seemed to spark better than thinner rods is about all I know. And the smoke generated from the rods (old stick welder for equipment) either added or detracted from shot to shot. If I try this again, I'll probably put a small fan to the side to actually control the smoke.
I was about 15' back and a bit skittish with my 105mm f/2.8 and zero lens protection. But after the first strike and pass I saw that the sparks (molten metal) were not even close to where I was standing. Not sure I'd do THAT part again though. lol.
I was worried about my ISO and the solution at first when I saw most were down around 50 and my body will only go to 200. That concern was removed when I saw my 105mm was f/32, so I had some room to still go with 200 and had at least two stops available from f22 to f32 made it easy.
I let WB float automatically. Next time, I'd probably fix it at 5500 for all shots so post would be easy to keep them the same. What was interesting was, the quality of light tossed out did in fact change all the time, so now thinking I'm not sure a fixed WB would make post any easier. It boiled down to selecting the shot content I liked then a few little/minor LR tweaks to the finished product. About 90 shots were taken inside of 15 minutes and three stood out from the rest. CORRECTION: Just checked the camera resetting from last night and I DID have a manual WB set at 5560 for these....
Here's a different one without the background. I flipflop on which I like better. In one respect the background gives it some context, ie: a shop, gun owner, mans man kind of feel. The other is 100% about the person illuminated only by the tool. Here's the other one sans background.
The sparks are better in the second one, and it's probably a stronger photo of the welder, but I admit I got a kick out of the bumperstickers in the first one.
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Comments
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
www.cameraone.biz
I poked around dgrin a bit and read up on how others had done it so I had some good starting points. The first shot out of the box was actually not far off from this one exposure-wise, so the settings provided were VERY close to put you in the ballpark if you want to try this yourself.
We played with a couple different rod sizes with differing results. Thicker rods at a given power seemed to spark better than thinner rods is about all I know. And the smoke generated from the rods (old stick welder for equipment) either added or detracted from shot to shot. If I try this again, I'll probably put a small fan to the side to actually control the smoke.
I was about 15' back and a bit skittish with my 105mm f/2.8 and zero lens protection. But after the first strike and pass I saw that the sparks (molten metal) were not even close to where I was standing. Not sure I'd do THAT part again though. lol.
I was worried about my ISO and the solution at first when I saw most were down around 50 and my body will only go to 200. That concern was removed when I saw my 105mm was f/32, so I had some room to still go with 200 and had at least two stops available from f22 to f32 made it easy.
I let WB float automatically. Next time, I'd probably fix it at 5500 for all shots so post would be easy to keep them the same. What was interesting was, the quality of light tossed out did in fact change all the time, so now thinking I'm not sure a fixed WB would make post any easier. It boiled down to selecting the shot content I liked then a few little/minor LR tweaks to the finished product. About 90 shots were taken inside of 15 minutes and three stood out from the rest. CORRECTION: Just checked the camera resetting from last night and I DID have a manual WB set at 5560 for these....
Here's a different one without the background. I flipflop on which I like better. In one respect the background gives it some context, ie: a shop, gun owner, mans man kind of feel. The other is 100% about the person illuminated only by the tool. Here's the other one sans background.
.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
I tend to like the first one best.
Sam
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky