Sparrow egg

ziggy53

This is a "studio" shot in that it is staged and shot under controlled conditions.

The egg is real. I found it on my sidewalk earlier in the year. Something had "robbed" the contents, but left most of the shell intact.

I shot this with two daylight compact fluorescent lamps in reflector fixtures, and used the onboard flash at -2 ex-comp. The results were realistic, but I wanted to bring out the detail of the markings on the egg shell. Increased contrast didn't have the right effect.

What finally worked was to create a seperate layer, run a "Fresco" filter on that, and then combine with the base layer using "Hard Light", adjusted to suit my taste.

I used my Minolta Dimage A2 with a macro accessory lens, mounted on a copy stand. Manual exposure of 1/80th at f11. Original exposure was RAW, processed in RSE to a 16bit TIFF, then PS7, staying in 16bit as long as possible, saved as JPG for distribution.

ziggy53

P.S. The original attachment was lost and I recreated the current attachment from scratch using, hopefully, a very similar processing.

Skippy

ziggy53 wrote:

This is a "studio" shot in that it is staged and shot under controlled conditions.

The egg is real. I found it on my sidewalk earlier in the year. Something had "robbed" the contents, but left most of the shell intact.

I shot this with two daylight compact fluorescent lamps in reflector fixtures, and used the onboard flash at -2 ex-comp. The results were realistic, but I wanted to bring out the detail of the markings on the egg shell. Increased contrast didn't have the right effect.

What finally worked was to create a seperate layer, run a "Fresco" filter on that, and then combine with the base layer using "Hard Light", adjusted to suit my taste.

I used my Minolta Dimage A2 with a macro accessory lens, mounted on a copy stand. Manual exposure of 1/80th at f11. Original exposure was RAW, processed in RSE to a 16bit TIFF, then PS7, staying in 16bit as long as possible, saved as JPG for distribution.

ziggy53

The egg looks good Ziggy, like it's in a real nest still ... Skippy

ziggy53

Skippy wrote:

The egg looks good Ziggy, like it's in a real nest still ... Skippy

Thanks Skippy.

ziggy53

Awais Yaqub

Wow at 1st i thought it is Dinosaur egg in museum great pic

ziggy53

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Wow at 1st i thought it is Dinosaur egg in museum great pic

Thanks Awais.

The egg is only 25mm long, so this is a macro shot in 35mm terms.

ziggy53