Dicing with, well dice actually.

OK, this was a bit quicker than I’d planned but last night saw me with some time on my hands and a sudden need to not be near my computer. So, inspired by the table lamp that I tripped over I decided to try the first of the projects I mentioned the other day.

First things first, I don’t have a studio or any sort of fancy environment so I needed to do a lot of improvisation here. The background on the following shots is a black t-shirt draped over an old shower box. It kind of gave me the effect I wanted so yea me.

I think it was Stuart who wanted to see more pictures, and since last night was about learning I’m going to try and walk through the stages I went through while taking the snaps.

Oh, before we get into this. Given my history, I feel it’s important to point out that none of these shots have been post processed in any way. No cropping, no contrast/brightness, no picasa. The only difference between these shots and the ones I have are to reduce the overall image size to make them more viewable on the web.

The Setup…

In one of my other lives I’m a role-player. Yes, the sort of person even nerds point at and snigger. Enough already. Get over it. Stop sniggering. No, I don’t dress up as an elf or a gnome and no, I don’t own a copy of the Necronomicon (anymore). What I do own is a bag of dice. Dice of many colours and shade, dice of doom some would say having seen my luck with them.

there were a bundle sitting below my monitor for a few weeks and I thought the colours looked quite nice. It was these that drove me to try this out.

So, using my improvised setup described above (this is going to be all over the place today isn’t it?) I put the camera on the tripod and took this shot.

(1/60, f/4.5, aperture priority, focal length – 34mm, ISO – 400, 02/10/07 20:23)

Here the room lights were on, the camera was left on the settings I’d last used and I just pushed the button. The results are very bright, very boring and just mweh.

So, I moved on a little

The next shot I zoomed in a little on the dice and increased the aperture(probably cause the camera made me).

(1/60, f/5.6, aperture priority, focal length – 55mm, ISO – 400, 02/10/07 20:24)

Still crud. No really. No need to be nice. The background is a little better, the dice a little brighter maybe. But still crud.

I decided to try playing with the little desk light I’d found. I pointed it onto the dice from an angle of about 40 degrees to see what effect it had. I also turned off the house lights and dropped the ISO level (because I remembered it was set high) at this point

(2s, f/5.6, aperture priority, focal length – 55mm, ISO – 100, 02/10/07 20:25)

Getting better. the gem dice were beginning to take on a life of their own and the shadows looked cool.

I adjusted the light to see if I could pull the shadows further. In the next shot the desk light is at about 10 degrees, giving light across the dice.

(Oh, this ones a little blurred for some reason)

(5s, f/5.6, aperture priority, focal length – 55mm, ISO – 100, 02/10/07 20:27)

I played around with this position for a while, but was really uninspired by the output. the solid dice and the colours were just nothing great. I also didn’t like that I was at full zoom(?) with my 18-55 lens and was still sitting quite far out. I didn’t want to start moving the tripod, so…

I changed the lens.

Using my Tamron 55-200 I took the following shot.

(1.6s, f/5.0, aperture priority, focal length – 171mm, ISO – 100, 02/10/07 20:36)

I liked this a lot. The low depth of field on the dice and the reflections and shadows were impressive (or so I think).

So, pushing my luck…

(6s, f/10, aperture priority, focal length – 200mm, ISO – 100, 02/10/07 20:36)

Increasing the depth of field (big number = little hole (see I remembered!)) and suddenly it gets real pretty (at least to my eyes).

So, pushing my luck further….

(20s, f/18, aperture priority, focal length – 200mm, ISO – 100, 02/10/07 20:37)

I think this has gone off the boil. The background has started to get quite washed out again and the warmth of the previous image (which I pray I didn’t touch up in Picasa – I’m sure of it. But I will double check tonight).

So, tell me what you think. And be gentle, I really like the penultimate image. I think it’s one of the best I’ve taken to date.