Black Pepper

photocat

I am working on a book to be published in september 2005. It is about an Indian restaurant in Bradford.
I do the photography and the layout. My first thought for this book was spices...
These are black peppers, shot lying on the floor of my livingroom, with the peppers in a dish, little tripod, aperture 8-shutterspeed 1/30. Macro.
Comments welcome.... Tips for possible shots are welcome too.

dugmar

This is cool. Maybe experiment a bit with the pepper, maybe bring the focus to the ones in the foreground? The ones in front, being blurry tend to distract me, while the ones blurred in the background don't.

Worth a shot. (no pun intended)

Doug

Sam

photocat wrote:

I am working on a book to be published in september 2005. It is about an Indian restaurant in Bradford.
I do the photography and the layout. My first thought for this book was spices...
These are black peppers, shot lying on the floor of my livingroom, with the peppers in a dish, little tripod, aperture 8-shutterspeed 1/30. Macro.
Comments welcome.... Tips for possible shots are welcome too.

Interesting..................I have never looked at pepper this close.

Ok, you already heve one sugestion, here's mine.

This is one I want to try. Set the shot up any way you want. Secure the camera on a tripod, then take multiple shots at different focus points. Blend, merge, mask, clone, however, to put all the photos together. You would then have every little spec of pepper in focus.

May not be better, but will be different.

Sam

ginger_55

I like the ones in focus. I agree that the blurred ones in back don't bother me as much as the ones in front. I would try to get the front 2/3s in focus, just IMO.

You can increase the f stop considerably, or on my camera I can, that will open the lens and get more in focus. It will also slow the shutter speed, may need to find out how to do it on bulb.........as long as it is held down. And with a shutter release, camera secure on tripod.

Just some suggestions from someone who did neither and messed up my last macro shots.

ginger, smile. Pepper sure is neat looking!
(hey you could take it out in the bright sun and get more light, but I think you will still need a higher f stop than f8, but might not have to have the shutter so slow?)

wxwax

Great idea. How about warmer light, and ramp the focus, and follow the rule of thirds. Have the sharpest focus be in the first third?

photocat

Thanks Guys... that is so neat, I get feedback that is really very useful.
I will try to reshoot again tomorrow. In the mean time I have gotten peas, and other exotic spices and herbs.

It is a bit funny, I always imagined that DOF would go in a circle, cause our aperture is mostly a circle... It is not. I discovered that it is one straight horizontal band that is sharp... very noticable in this shot.

Sam, thanks for looking, I will take you up on your suggestion and do the different angles. I never had seen pepper like this. I thought they were little black balls. They are anything but that! I was extremely surprised when I saw how they came out.
Thanks Sam, Ginger and Dugmar for the appreciated input.

photocat

wxwax wrote:

Great idea. How about warmer light, and ramp the focus, and follow the rule of thirds. Have the sharpest focus be in the first third?

What do you mean Sid by ramping the focus (you guys forget that I speak dutch).
Warming up the light sounds good... Will give it a try!

photocat

Is this better? This is only a cropped version, I need to redo the shoot by daylight.
I used a warm filter orange 85.