Tuesday, August 4, 2009

My new Wishlist

1. Lensbaby Composer with Plastic Optic
2. Nikkor AF 105mm f/2 DC
3. Nikon D3000/D5000 to replace my ageing D40X
4. Another SB900 or SB800

Where am I going to get the money for all this...

Monday, August 3, 2009

Lighting up the Puchi Puchi

I wrote my first post for the ST Blog today, and to go with the article, I took three pictures of my Mugen Puchi Puchi toy. (You can find the ST Blog entry here.) This is just a quick note on how I lit up the photos.

All were taken from a top-down perspective with the AF-S 60mm micro at f11, 1/100s, ISO100 and with the SB900 off camera, controlled by the SU800. The items were placed on a black acrylic board on the floor.

Puchi1
#1

Puchi2
#2

Photos #1 and #2 were lit up in the same way. Very simple, the SB900, with diffuser on was positioned to the top right of the frame, propped on a small stool and pointing to the bottom left of the frame, parallel to the floor. I placed a white sheet of paper at the bottom left as a reflector. (Note that I didn't submit #2 for the article.)

Puchi3
#3

Photo #3 was much harder to light up. The problem is trying to light up the bubble wrap evenly. My first attempts were dismal -- the top right area was too "hot", while there was too much falloff at the bottom left corner. Eventually, I got the shot by moving my SB900 further away from the subject, increasing the flash EV compensation, and used a sheet of white paper to diffuse it instead of the diffuser cap.

The main reflector remained but I propped up a white namecard below the Puchi Puchi to reduce the shadows there further.

It was my first time doing a product shot, and I suspect it could have been done better. But at least my makeshift setup worked this time round.

Maybe I'll try lighting up the Mugen Can Beer if I get it and post it here...

Saturday, August 1, 2009

An adventure in Bollywood...

Bollywood Veggies, that is.

I was on leave from work two Fridays ago (July 24), and Joan suggested going to a farm for a breath of fresh air. (We all know how small Singapore is) She'd learnt about the farm through a friend, so off we went, on a early Friday morning into the Singapore countryside.

There is a free shuttle bus service that runs from Kranji MRT to the various farms in the Kranji cluster, but here's the catch: it runs every 1.5 hours only. We made it on the first bus at 9am just by a whisker, and got to the farm at around... 10am? (can't quite remember, too lazy to check) The bus driver was a man called Larry, and he was quite chatty, introducing the Kranji farms to us during the ride.

The owner, Ivy Singh, was a very interesting person to talk to. As we were eating our breakfast at the cafe (we were the first visitors that day), she told us of the farm's struggles to get started, her brushes with the law (she was due to appear in court the following week for some complaint filed against her by a gov agency) and how Joan and I have the same type of smile (lol). Then work came in the form of a group visit and she left us to explore the farm on our own.

Here are three of my favourite shots:


Photobucket
f16, 1/100s, ISO400. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

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f11, 1/60s, ISO100. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

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f5.6, 1/320s, ISO400. © Lin Zhaowei, 2009.


All taken with my trusty 60mm. The first two shots were taken with an SB900 to camera left. The third was taken with natural light. No tripod, so a relatively compact flash unit is your best friend in such a situation.

After a short 1hour-plus jaunt around, we sat down for lunch at the farm cafe (there were a few other diners around, surprisingly!). Had banana curry, bamboo leaves and papaya salad with brown rice. Nothing too fanciful but it was probably the healthiest meal I had in a while.