Photograms

Photograms

Photograms are very simple to make if you have a dark room. Apparently Man Ray came up with the idea. I always associate him with the sculpture made up of a steam iron with a nails sticking out. Quite odd, but then he was a surrealist.. Here is a link to some Man Ray Photograms plus other assorted artwork. Seems that Man Ray had a much better name for these, he called them Rayographs.
     Photograms are made by placing objects on top of photographic paper and then exposing the paper to light underneath an enlarger. This results in silhouettes of solid objects and ghosting of transparent / transluscent materials. The exposed picture is then developed / stopped and fixed by soaking / washing the photographic paper in three separate trays.

Here are two of my photograms using a "gorillapod", a transparent drinking cup and a five pound note. These were all exposed to between 3 and 5 seconds of light. Forgot to note the f number. Possibly 2.5?

This could be an interesting Rochache test! Could anyone who reads this (if there is anyone?) perhaps leave some comments on what you think you see?

Then by creating a negative version in Picasa (best free photo organiser / simple photo editor EVER!) a positive picture results ...

As I was quite enjoying myself I added a couple of my bolt on lenses and glasses. Fortunately for me I'm not paying for the use of the paper!

Which when inverted ...

Cloud storage of Photographs ... a personal view!

Cloud Storage

I've experimented with quite a few different photograph storage mediums in my time. I'm no expert, but I've been asked by a few people about it, so I've written a little guide/rant that some might be interested in. Follow this link to find out more!

White balance, naked "Bob", studio lighting and blueberries under forks

White balance

I have always been slightly mystified by "white balance", and I don't think I've ever moved the setting off the default one of AWB on any camera I've used. Camera manuals are singularly unhelpful as they simply show you how to set it, but not why! Now finally I understand! The idea of white balance is to adjust for the odd colour casts that might result from taking photographs in artificial lighting / shadows / Cloudy skies etc.

"White" objects will appear yellow under artificial light. This can be offset by using the White balance "incandescent" setting. This injects more blue into the image to offset the tungsten yellow. Similarly cloudy conditions can result in grey whites which can be adjusted for using the "cloudy" white balance setting.

As a demonstration here are three images of our studio naked torso "Bob". Bob is a grey silver colour, just about life size but somewhat lacking in the limbs and head department. These photographs were taken without a flash but with the aid of a "modelling" light.

"Bob" taken with the AWB setting. f22. 1/30th. ISO 1600

"Bob" taken with the incandescent White Balance. f22. 1/30th. ISO 6400

"Bob at "Cloudy". f22. 1/8th. ISO 6400

Studio Lighting

This is called an "Infinity Cove" which is an all-white space with no corners, designed to give the impression that the background of an object extends to infinity. The white background allows for a range of coloured lighting using jells (coloured transparent plastic) and various other modifiers,

A lower level brightness "modelling" light is initially used to gauge where lighting would be most appropriate. This modelling light contains a booster flash which is synchronised with the camera via a hot shoe dongle (wireless /blue tooth?) . This provides a very bright light. The more expensive the lighting the faster it is to recharge.

There are five key elements to lighting to take in to consideration ...

• How even is the light and how does it affect white balance
• Intensity
• Contrast
• Direction
• Quality of light (e.g. diffuse, spot, soft box lighting)

Modifiers such as honeycomb light modifier. This can be used as a spotlight, but can be used to produce a brighter or more diffuse light by using different honeycomb thicknesses

Soft boxes as the name suggests produce a softer more flattering light

The beauty dish, a light source with a narrow 45° beam spread. When used close to the subject, the narrow beam spread allows a more selective area of coverage.

These, plus various other lights can be arranged in almost infinite variety. However, there are a few "classic" light settings.

Split lighting, Short lighting, Broad lighting, Butterfly lighting, Loop lighting, High key and Low key being just a few. 

"Short lighting" .. light from one direction. Photograph is taken towards the darker side.

"Broad lighting" . light from one direction. Photograph is taken towards the lighter side.

If you want to know more about lighting and have access to or room for a studio then have a look at this website..

Rembrandt lighting 

There are numerous photographers who are well known for their use of lighting. If you want to see more then I'd recommend you follow one or more of these links.

Rankin

Paul Winch Furness

Jan Groover

Ron van Dongen

Ellen von Unwerth

Sarah Moon

Experimentally lighting blueberries, forks and wine

So ... lighting! As an experiment I tried setting up a little"studio" in our dining room. However resources are scarce! I have an angle poise light, room lights a few torches and a candle or two.

"Fork handles" at f5, 2 seconds exposure (using a tripod and remote shutter release) and ISO of 200. 28mm focal lengh

Any connection between this picture and a famous "Two Ronnies" sketch was altogether completely accidental! (Especially as I've never been a fan ... with perhaps the exception of this one sketch.)
The odd painting with the eyes had been stored behind this glass topped unit for some time. Quite serendipitous considering I was attempting to take a reflecting picture of arranged forks and blueberries to look like a pair of eyes!
I shot the above in a darkened room lit only by four candles reflecting off a white table top to the right. I did not twig the "fork handles" connection until much later. Here the white balance is set at a cool 2500K. I used a cheap wind up bluish LED light to illuminate the picture.

 Here is the "studio" with white A4 sheets used to blank off the book case to the left and the candles / white table top to the right. The wall at the back is a very pale green. This is a very poor picture! Must do better!

Shutter speed part 2. Dripping tap meets Lego swingers

By the way. I've added more images to this page

Varying shutter speed on a stationary camera

As a counterpoint to varying shutter speed while panning, the next exercise was to vary shutter speed on a stationary camera while capturing motion. One example I have seen is that of a dripping tap. A fast shutter should be able to capture individual water droplets, while a slower speed would turn a number of individual drops into a blurred stream. I didn't think that a dripping tap on its own seemed all that photogenic, so I added Lego figures swinging on cotton thread to provide a little more interest!

Note: No Lego figures were harmed during the filming of this sequence.

f16 at 1/4 of a second. ISO 160. Lots of blurry Lego with a blurred stream of droplets from the tap

f13 at 1/6th of a second. ISO 160. Slightly less blur. Blurred droplet stream still visible.

f11 at 1/10th of a second. ISO 160.

f8 at one 1/15th of a second.ISO 160. Some elongated droplets becoming visible.

f4.5 at 1/50th. ISO 160. Less motion blur on the figures.

f4.5 at 1/125 second. ISO 400. Motion blur reduced more. I had to up the ISO to get this faster shutter speed at f4.5

f6.3 at 1/1250th of a second. ISO 6400. No motion blur. Individual water droplets captured. Again, I had to up the ISO to get this faster shutter speed at f6.3

Lenses, Metering and panning

Lenses. To be brief, there are a lot of different lenses. A good lense is vital. Prime lenses are excellent as they are designed for a single task and have a fixed focal length (portrait photographers use a 70mm prime). Multi purpose lenses are good but cannot give the same quality of image as a prime. On the plus side a multi purpose lense does save the effort of lugging around a whole bag of separate lenses! Good lenses also tend to be expensive.
50mm prime lens gives a similar view to the human eye. Anything in the hundreds of mm being zoom/telephoto.Prime lenses are less likely to distort an image, but some distortion may occur with multi purpose lenses. Lenses with lower "f"  numbers provide the best quality of image. Lenses with NR or VR are to be recommended as these minimise camera shake / vibration.

Metering.
A light meter unsurprisingly enough measures light. This is used to set the correct exposure based on the available light.  Letting in too much light will overexpose an image while letting in too little with result in underexposure. Sometimes a compromise is called for when capturing an image with a bright background.  Either the foreground will appear in silhouette against a "well exposed" background or the foreground wlll be correct, but the background "blown out". There are ways around this using back light compensation or by using Photoshop layering.  Generally it is better to underexpose an image rather than overexpose it, as digital editing can be used to lighten dark areas, but will not be able to recover much from blown out regions.

Spot metering provides a light meter reading from a specific point. When photographing an image with a range of contrast from bright to dark then meter on the brighter part of the image (i.e. a wedding dress rather than the grooms suit).

Multi metering provides an average light reading for an area. More useful when there is less of a range in contrast.

Homework
As an exercise we were instructed to use spot metering to provide two images against a bright background. One photo to meter on the darker foreground and the other to meter on the bright background.

F8 at a 60th of a second. Spot meter on jumper.

F22 at 250th of a second. Metering on the sky

Panning and the effect of shutter speed.

Panning: Following a subject to either freeze movement or to show movement by blurring the background. A fast shutter (1/60th and faster) will tend to freeze motion. A slower shutter (less than 1/60th) will blur the background. Below are a few pictures I took today outside Kettering library. Here there's a wide expanse of pavement with steps and benches to encourage skaters to try a few tricks. These pics were taken without a tripod. The lighting was a little troublesome in that the pavement was in shade and the library wall in bright sunlight.

6th of a second. F20  with background blur.

8th of a second. F20.

10th of a second. F22

15th of a second at f20

20th of a sceond at f10

30th of a second at f10

50th of a second at f7.1

60th of a second at f8

200th of a second at f6