Slow Dolphin (Review)…

 It's my first blog post after my birthday (or second, if I count the previous one which was posted AFTER my birthday, automatically!), and guess what? I've gone pleasant gift from an online friend (and I'm very thankful for her for such a mindful gift!). In this post, I've decided to give some review of this gift. Not to criticize of course, but it is for any fellow photographer reading this and might find this useful.

I will present here some simple experiments I've done so far with this tool and hopefully anyone reading this would find them useful. 

General View

So, this Slow Dolphin light box is, well, a… light box! (Duh!). Sometimes also we might call such light boxes as "tents". Before I go on and review this product please bear in mind that I didn't go through the products line for Slow Dolphin, so maybe what I will be saying here is already available in other products of theirs, but this is just my impression about this light box alone.

Now, the product comes folded and in a fabric bag for easy carrying, and it spreads up as a cube as shown, and it comes with a number of backgrounds. So far, I've tried 3 of them, and I thought at first that all of them are plastic sheets (or PVC as mentioned in the leaflet) but turned out some of these backgrounds are actually paper-made.

The cube or box is black from the outside, with a circular hole on top which can be opened and closed (and can be used for shooting from the top if needed). The inside is lined with shining silver sheets with bits of velcro on the sides (to attach a diffuser sheet to soften the lights from the ring light at the top). I thought of taking a picture but I think it's not worth it anyway, things will ravel hopefully as I talk with the test shots I've made. Also, inside the box and on the upper edge on the back, there is a rubber band stretching from side to side which is ought to hold the background sheets from the top when placed in.

The box as mentioned already has a ring light on top. Actually, to be precise, 2 ring lights; A large one and a small one, and lighting them is controllable by a switch that is attached to the power cable (just like bedside lamps). One can light both rings or one of them, and also control their luminosity. 

The power cord is somewhat tricky here. I would say it is a double-edged sword. The cord is actually a USB cord, and probably it is common now to use such heads (for saving energy and other flexibility issues) but where I live, such sockets are not quite common yet (they exist but not common). Thus, to solve the problem here, I've used my mobile's charger plug to attach the USB head of the light box and plug it to power outlet.

G-Shock

So, I'm skipping here my initial shots using my mobile phone which I did right away with this product. Controlling things with the mobile phone are kind of tricky for me and I really hate it, but I just needed something to post on Facebook anyway!Thus, my real test was to be done with a "real" camera (yes, old one but still real you know). As a target, I've picked one watch (which ironically was a gift as well from 2 years ago or more, from a friend and I could never wear it!). 

Settings for shooting the G-Shock watch.

The light box was prepared first with the black background placed inside, and it covers the background and the ground or the bottom portion of the box. The bend in the corner of the sheet was highly reflective and I'm not sure really if it intended to be so (later on, this somewhat proved to be problematic). Anyway, for my subject here, the watch, I've wrapped it with a fishing line and pushes the line through the opening on the top of the box and held it firmly to the edge of the box with the help of a paper clip, and thus the watch was hanging in the air. Shaky situation, but with a gentle touch, the watch would be stable enough for a quick shot. The lighting inside the box was bright enough to allow a quick shutter speed which ensured a stable image after all. You can see here also the diffusing sheet attached up in the box held firmly with velcro, and it has a circular opening as well to allow for shooting through the box opening or, like in my case here, pass the fishing line through.

In the set as well, you might notice some pieces of paper at the bottom and a mirror (just outside the box on the left), and these were my extra props to add more control to the light. It took me a while to settle down with these, as I was actually using the mirror to reflect the light at the bottom under the watch, but then I've realized that a simple paper sheet would do the job, and I've used the mirror on the side to cast some light on the face of the watch (even though I should've used a polarizer here to have a clearer face).

G-Shock
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM @f/2.5, 400⁻¹s, ISO100.

Been a while since I've posted an image on this blog with all the shooting parameters! But here you go. Shooting with Canon EF 50m f/1.4 allowed me some freedom here with increasing the shutter speed without having to push the ISO higher a bit. I had to adjust the aperture though to get a proper depth of field as f/1.4, the lowest depth and widest aperture in this lens, can give somewhat a fuzzy look. 

Working with this lens was problematic somewhat despite the flexibility in the aperture, because I had to get far off from the watch and the box. Tried to fix the situation with some extension tubes, but nothing worked, so I had to get back as much as possible. The image seen here, G-Shock, is actually a cropped final shot. 

I've picked a black background on purpose here as I wanted to separate blacks (which is quite a hard process and in fact involves a lot of editing work rather than on-set work). The remnants of the fishing line were removed in Photoshop of course and here we go; a watch hanging in mid-air. I had to use some dodge and burn to lighten some areas of the watch (specially the face and sides). One might ask why not use a slower shutter speed or raise the ISO to get a brighter shot; Well, this is mainly because of the background which is highly reflective despite being black, so I had to keep my exposure value low, and fixing that in Photoshop would be somewhat tedious. Also, my original idea do require some dark sense of the whole thing to add an element of mystery. Such mood would require a low-key shot but here as it can be seen, I'm depending only on lights from the top which reflect from all directions inside the box, and nothing else. So, a low-key here is out of the question.

Madly Red

My next test was to be done with my favorite coffee mug (I think I've had it for more than 20 years now). In this test, I didn't take a shot for the setting unfortunately, but hopefully I will explain what I did here by comparing two shots put together.

Mug Shot
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM @f/2.5m, 25⁻¹s, ISO100.

As can be seen here, I've picked a red background for this shoot, since the mug is also red, just as was the case with G-Shock. In this shoot, I can't quite recall if I've used the diffusing sheet on the top or not, but it wouldn't make any big difference since the red background here is actually a matte paper sheet and not plastic. It did "diffuse" the light coming from the top still though and at large a band of light can be seen behind the mug. This is even after reduction and post-processing in Photoshop. I think the problem here lies with the depth of the box itself as the distance should be greater to hide the bend in the background from the shot. Since the ring light is at the center of box at the top, I'm assuming it is designed so that the product should also be lying at the center at the bottom, and thus I don't think putting the product further more forward is the way to go here.

The two shots in Mug Shot here are for comparison between adding a "contour" to the subject (left) and without anything (right). The contour here is usually a black body added on the sides (or if the background is black, it can be white sides) and it is usually done with glass objects or any polished surface. Here though, I do have a red surface so not quite the ideal surface to show the contour clearly, but nevertheless, it is clear that it makes a difference compared to the right shot, and it made the mug more defined. The problem here though was in adding the black sides, as I used the black sheet that came with the product and placed it under the red sheet after a struggle. It was still shaky and some part of it was protruding into the shot, so I had to put it down by placing some objects (and cropping the image after all). 

During this shoot I've also tried to use a speedlite in some way but the space was quite small and in fact placing the speedlite on the top didn't make much difference except for the fact that my shutter speed had been faster, but not much change in the quality of the light (or should I say the mood of the light); so using a speedlite or the LED ring light within the box kind of yielded the same result. Out of fun, I've also shot bracketed shots to merge as HDR and tone-map. I felt like doing some crazy HDR stuff as I didn't do something like that in a long time. I call it "creativity venting".

Royal

My third test came about with another black object, and a black background. Having learned about some of the difficulties already with the past 2 tests, I've tried to fix or go around these issues with my third test with this black perfume bottle (which I think was a gift as well!). 

The (final) shooting set for "Royal"

Here, as can be seen above, I've tried to place 2 thin foam pieces on the sides to add contour to this black body. The right one specifically was quite essential to light the face of the bottle (the bottle was turned a bit facing right as can be seen). Meanwhile, I've tried to go around the bend in the background sheet but pulling it a bit forward and placing the bottle even off-center and closer to the front of the box. Alas, that didn't do much to hide the reflections at the back. However, I've taken several shots with such reflections that might add to the mood after all. Also, I came about with the idea of combining several shots since such a thing is actually a usual and practical thing to do in product photography as I've seen in some YouTube videos before (no arguments here about the ethics because we are just combining images of different lighting, and this is not cheating!).

Royal (1)
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM @f/1.4, 60⁻¹s, ISO100.

I've made a mistake here when I didn't care much about putting the foam pieces straight vertically and closer to the bottle (in some way). The side of the bottle as can be seen in Royal (1) is not lighted completely to the bottom, but the reflections of the foam boards look fair on the cap. Here in Royal (1) you can see the "halos" in the background caused by the reflections of the light from the ring light. Diffusing the light with the diffusing sheet didn't change a whole lot really. Here also, I was using a polarizer which I hoped that it would enhance the reflection of the bottle on the black sheet but it didn't do much here, but it was quite remarkable in blocking other areas of light as I rotated the filter, and from there I got the other idea of combining several shots (not in HDR, but manually combining several shots of different lights). 

Royal (2)
Canon EF 50m f/1.4 USM @f/1.4, 60⁻¹s, ISO100.

Thus, after taking 3 or 4 different shots of different polarized light component, I went on merging them (with other enhancements of course). Personally, I do like Royal (2) more but some people do prefer Royal (1) looks; For this reason, as I was saying, these reflections in the background off the black sheet might be a desirable thing. But what if they are not? I guess here, there is no escaping doing a composite while editing the shots. I think I've missed illuminating the right side of the bottle in Royal (2) so this is something to bear in mind as well when doing such a work of composing. Yet though, in all conditions, i couldn't get the reflections of the bottle off the sheet to appear, however I rotated the polarizer.

The Peel

So, at this point, many ideas had been crossing my mind on how to expand my usage for this light box (despite its relative small size). Like one idea came to my mind is using it as a set for high-speed photography, but seeing how it worked out with speedlites in Madly Red above, I've omitted this idea from my head completely. So, I had to think of something milder, somehow. The idea came about while I was looking at my "collection" of walnut shells! Why not make a peel effect out of one; I didn't do such project in a long time now. Before I go on with this test or shoot, there was one essential "hurdle" to tackle first. The rotation. 

The rotating part
of SPH-303

For starters, I've figured maybe I could use the rotating base of my panoramic head (Manfrotto SPH-303); After all, this usage was actually proposed in the original instruction manual of the head. However, the base proved to be hard to move as it required a grip on the lower part of the base while rotating the top part. I tried oiling the base, but yet it was quite firm and could not be easily rotated. Even though I did such "peeling effect" before for various objects, and using this base, but the base was always placed on a tripod, and I was thinking that I would use the 5° interval to be very precise; Such short intervals are used when composing Object Panorama which are typically used for viewing products in 3D almost on some websites. However, my aim here was different as I'm doing peeling. I thought maybe my usual stitching program(s) would somewhat have it easy with such short interval of shots to align and stitch the images together. i tried that before and failed, and well, proved to be a fail now too when I've done this test!

CamRanger MP-360
Motorized pan head

After the fail with the rotating base, I thought of using an item that I purchased long time ago and almost NEVER used it; The CamRanger MP-360 Motorized Pan Head. I've purchased this item in hope to do some astrophotography of some sort with it but turned out that the head could be tilted only 15° up and down and it was just impractical for my own good. Anyway, I thought of giving it a try and see if it can help with the situation here.
It is a bulky item and occupied a considerable space inside the Slow Dolphin light box, but I thought it could be worthy because it has a remote and could be rotated for 360 degrees. Moreover, it has a scale to gauge the rotation angle. However, all of that disappeared into thin air; Turned out that it needs a tripod as well to stabilize the base and be able to rotate properly, as the surface of the light box was too smooth. Moreover, the cable of the remote and the scale that shows the angle would rotate along, making the situation cumbersome further. Thus, I had to put it aside and improvise something else. 

The final setting for shooting
the walnut peel.

To shorten the story, the idea was to place the walnut on my phone while running the compass app on the phone (and keeping the phone on of course, never putting the screen on sleep). By looking from the top through the circular hole, I was able to check the amount of degrees to rotate the phone 5° for each shot. Not a precise method, but the best I could do in this situation. I've placed the diffusing sheet here as well to help me look better at the screen from the top as the LED ring light was too bright and my eyes couldn't figure out the readings. As for the walnut, it was another hurdle to deal with as I didn't know how or what to fix it upon. Finally, I've picked some metallic container (purchased this as a prop years ago) and glued the walnut with wax (candle wax, yes). I think wax here is the best solution ever for quick and light work; Glue was messy and took considerable time to dry. So, the whole thing was placed on top of the phone and started the shoot, using my Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens, at f/16. 

The shooting was such an exhaustive process as everything was done manually; Looking through the top, rotating carefully, and shooting (using the camera wireless remote). I think the whole process (and the breaks in between for every 90°) lasted for more than 1 hour. During the shoot, it was apparent that the walnut would drift to the right side so I would have to pull it back to the center and I just hoped for the best when it is time to stitch the images together. Also, because of the size of the phone, and because the rotation was not precisely around the center, the phone would nudge against the bend of the sheet (which I needed to add to keep the background white instead of silver here).

Walnut Peel (1)

After the shoot, the first step was to edit all of the RAW files and make minor adjustments to the contrast and exposure or brightness, and then covert all files to JPEG. I was almost sure of the failure of automatic stitching but I gave it a try anyway, and well, it failed! So, it was time to do the manual work and to stitch about 72+ images manually in Photoshop, using layer masks. As I've stated before, I've done such projects before but not for that number of shots. The work was exhaustive and took more than a day (actually more than 2 days) and proved at some point to problematic (specially memory-wise). As for the final result, Walnut Peel (1), I've cropped the final outcome from the top and bottom to remove some parts that were not capable of being aligned. This lengthy process actually convinced me that working with such a high number of images was not really a good idea, at all!

Walnut Peel (2)

Thus, I had another go with the blending but this time I picked a fewer number of shots from the set, almost for every 30°, and tried to blend them together. Still, I've faced some problems, but relatively, it was much faster and better than the first trial with more than 72 images to work with. Here, in Walnut Peel (2), I've kept the topmost part of the shell and tried to blend it with the rest of the image. I think from now on, it would be wise to work with fewer images in such projects. Worth noting here that I usually do "peeling" shooting using a tripod and some platform and the rotating head sometimes, using either speedlite(s) or ambient light to do the shooting, but never done it in a closed space (semi-closed actually) like this light box before.

In the process of reviewing the images, as I've stated before, the walnut started to drift away from the center and even though I've used f/16 to ensure a proper depth of field, but yet this drift caused some images to have some out-of-focus parts. It is true that macro lenses are quite sensitive to distances but I think the distance of the drift here was not quite problematic, and using f/16 (I thought) should have been sufficient to ensure a good depth of field all across the shoot. I'm starting to doubt this lens really, specially with few images having over-exposure and needed to be fixed before converting to JPEG. I'm not sure what caused such over-exposure while working in completely manual mood, with fixed f-number and fixed shutter speed, but this is not the first time that this lens specifically caused such anomalies. Which makes me think of having another macro lens or maybe next time I better be working with my 50mm lens and extension tubes to avoid such anomalies. Anyway, I'm not a heavy macro shooter so such matter can wait for now. 

Conclusions

So, before I head to write down my own points about Slow Dolphin's light box, I would like to note, again, that I'm not sure about the line of products the Slow Dolphin provides. Maybe some of the points that I will mention here have been already dealt with in another line of products from Slow Dolphin.

So, firstly, we have the issue of the bent sheets here which can some times provide unwanted reflections (yet they can be desirable as I witnessed). Thus, in between the two opinions, there might be something out there to compromise. Adding to that, since the reflections are mostly produced at the bend of the sheet, so maybe the depth of the box has to be increase to allow for a more gentle curve for the sheet. 

In relation to the first point mentioned already, some props could be useful with such box, like some platform to raise the product for example (to avoid having the bend of the background in the shot), or something to provide reflections of the product since the provided sheets don't quite give strong reflection (as seen in Royal above). It is true that such items might be (most of the time) provided by third-party, but it would be nice to have a wholesome package here with essentials and basics for product photography. I would add to the list of props here as well, some capabilities or tools to enable hanging of jewelry and other items; Those can definitely be handy. As for a rotation prop, well, I've seen such products online somewhere but I'm not sure if these would quite essential for product photography but I think it would be wholesome in some way to complete the set, probably.

The box is designed to be self-sufficient, with its own LED ring light and it's opaque. However, usually tents or light box like that do have translucent sides to allow for external light uses. The ring light does a nice job, yet though some flexibility issues might arise here if the photographer has other ideas (e.g. shooting with lights from the side for more low-key feel). Having one source of light in one direction is somewhat limiting for the creative endeavor in general. I believe with velcro, things can be managed in switching between opaque and translucent sides (maybe?). Or, on the other hand, more LED lights can be provided for directional light when needed, with a control for switching them on and off.

I believe that Slow Dolphin do provide variety of sizes of such light box, but one thing that a photographer has to bear in mind here is that the product to be photographed should be in proper proportion to the size of the light box. Here for example, as seen above in Madly Red, the mug was somewhat bulky and the diffusing sheet over the ring light wouldn't do much to soften the shadows of the mug at the bottom, mainly because of the distance between the light source and the object. To properly apply diffusing, there should be some distance between the light source and the diffusing material, as well as between the outlet and the object in general; That way we can have soft diffused shadows of the object. Actually, this is one of the reasons also that makes translucent sides and using outside light sources a good idea. I guess though using a white or a black background would reduce such problems after all (if desired).

So, this is my humble review and experimentation with this marvelous (and dear) gift which I've received for my birthday! I hope this review is out there to help someone about going about shooting some products. The flexibility of this item is surely admired and I think I will do more experimentation with some products to shoot, hopefully. Thanks galore to the sender :) ; it is something that surely put a smile on my face more than anything else around me :)

I Progetti…

Weather getting colder here, with some rains; A time to rejoice. The only thing I'm hating about this is the traffic jams. They are there all the time in this place of course, but with a tiny spit of rain and the whole scene turns like if it is a snowstorm in Siberia. I quite realize the need to drive safely but no need to create a "soap opera" about it. Such conditions, specially at night, tend to put more pressure on my vision as it seems. Let's see if we are able to go out and shoot at late nights as in the old days during this winter. Though, thinking about it, I really can't think of a proper place that would deserve my attention right now. Most of my projects and inspirations are done indoors, and specifically my home, and with my body being split between work, traffic jams, and home, I really started to hate the idea of driving just to do a shoot. Unless it's for money of course. Meanwhile, I'll keep trying to do my thing with my own head and my own ideas with little projects…

Let's Play

I've done a session about 2 or 3 weeks ago with my brother doing the preacher gesture. Out of 8 or 9 shots, I've settled with 2 shots mainly that were relatively good. I've discussed these in the previous post anyway if you like to read about it. However, I've decided to take this one step further with a little edit.

Due del Predicatore

Due del Predicatore (Two of Preacher) is formed by one of these shots done previously, with duplicating the image and rotating it. Some delicate masking work was involved here as well. It was an experiment just to see how it would look like, but this experiment did trigger something else. An idea.
This idea is still waiting to be completed, but I've managed to put a plan or a general view for it by writing them down, and all I need now is some props, and a model. As usual, I might need the services of my poor brother again!
The idea is about creating a set of Scopa game cards, but in images; Real ones. Thus, I will need some disks or coins for real, swords or knives, for real, and many other things that I'm still not sure how I will be getting those.

Notes and plans for the next project.

In a nutshell, I'm supposed to end up with 40 images, one for each type of cards in the Scopa game. Sounds too much work, and I think it is indeed, but I think simplifying things further would help on quickening the process. For example, I'm set on using a single speedlite for all images and probably I would be using the globe diffuser on it for most of the shots. I've decided also that all shots should be with my modified camera and using the infrared filter (B+W 092), but later on, the images would be converted to B&W completely, and maybe with some reduced contrast like in the case of Due del Predicatore. I think the lighting should be dramatic, but with some sense of mystery, and I believe nothing mimics the feeling of mystery better than the gray tones. In Scopa, the "faces" cards, or cards with human figures are three: Donna, Cavallo, and Re (queen, horse, and king respectively). I'm planning to keep the shooting for these cards to the end since they require a full body shot, and it would be nice to have various figures instead of working, again, with my brother alone. Thus, for the time being, I might get on working with the "normal" cards. There is a problem with the Donna though, as I don't think I will be able to get a female figure to help me here (not ready to pay for a model, pardon me), so a little research here revealed that in some Italian versions of the game, the Donna is called "Fante" instead; soldier, or foot soldier, and sometimes this would be translated into English as "The Knave." So, there are other routes around this problem I guess; we'll see.
Lens-wise, there will not be a single lens to work as I might range my shots from macro to normal, but I believe the work won't be out of 3 main lenses I have: 20mm Voigtländer, 50mm Canon, and 100mm Macro Canon. The last one though seems to be acting weird lately so I might use extension tubes if I have to with my 50mm lens. For a beginning, I'm already planning on setting the aperture to f/11, always. Talk about more flash power! There is some thought ahead about how to represent this set (and how to upload it to stock if it is feasible to be sold like that) but such thoughts are kept for later in the meantime, and it's important to get it done first. Till the time to complete this comes, I need to get busy with another simple project that I've decided to do and might post about it later!

An Taobh Níos Dorcha

"The Darker Side," this is what the title is about. However, to be honest, this idea was not the core of this shooting session with myself, but rather the idea was completely stemming from a technical aspect, and a desire to create something that would be suitable with the Swipe property on Instagram. In other words, an image made specifically for Instagram in the first place. There was nothing to think of, naturally, except of my face. Beside the fact that selfies on Instagram seldom appear as slides to swipe through; it's either regular shots in a slideshow or a panorama (which I post regularly on Instagram). Thus, a selfie sounded the perfect idea!

The set (and mess) for this little project.

The idea of "the darker side" of the personality sounded cliché to me. I think the idea had been used since early sci-fi times, but thinking about it, I really couldn't think of anything better to put to proper use with this shoot. However, I was already planning to do this using some Photoshop editing, since I can't make myself look like a wolf or something on location, specially with such sensitive shooting!
As can be seen here with the set, I've placed 2 white paper boards or sheets of cardboard behind the camera with one speedlite pointing to one of them. The idea was to give an effect of two speedlites with the power of one higher than the other, all that using just a single speedlite (which kind of worked here after a struggle with the settings, and the power supply!). The shoot is pretty sensitive because I have to stay still in front of the lens without moving a muscle, except of changing my facial expressions from angelic, to demonic! Of course, my old portable monitor had been put to some good use here. Since I wanted some "dramatic" look and unusual ones, it was natural to think of shooting infrared again. I didn't want to deprive the image of colors this time, since I believe colors here, the slight addition of them, makes greater impact on the viewer. I'll save the B&W when it comes to absolute facial expressions and skin wrinkles!

The Joker Side of The TJ

The work is to take 2 shots, as stable as possible, in the same position as much as possible. Thus, it requires high shutter speed, but indoors, however, the sync speed (1/250s) is just enough to dim the surrounding. You can see or imagine part of the mess that my room is if you checked the set above, thus it was important to dim my surroundings, or in other words, kill the ambient light. I mentioned above that I used a single speedlite reflecting it off 2 boards in V-shape to mimic the effect of 2 speedlites, one more powerful than the other. After mingling with some settings I've created the effect needed but it appeared in reverse order: left of the picture is darker. I have to admit though, the monitor kind of tricked me into believing that the test shots were properly lit (I didn't check the histogram) and when it was the time to process the RAW files, I had to pump the Exposure drastically. There was a trial also to use a second speedlite (430EX II) to add light to the hair somehow, but I've neglected the idea and I'm glad I did so!
Because of the way that Instagram slides work (swiping to the left) and I want to show the "angelic" side first, I had to reverse the image and go on with my work. The rest was some Liquify tool job with some masks to complete the demonic figure on the right. There is some tiny work that had to be done to the size of the image as well since I need to divide it to two equal parts, and hence The Joker Side of The TJ appears in somewhat panoramic ratio.

A post shared by TJ.Photography (@tj_q8) on Nov 13, 2017 at 6:17pm PST

On Instagram, it seems that many people liked the idea and considered it something new. This is encouraging to think of something similar, to be going around the various options that Instagram offers like the Swipe option here. It is an open door to surrealism. Nevertheless, I do wish if Instagram enables or do something about 360 images which might make my life a bit easier. However, this swipe display on Instagram does indeed spark for me some ideas about displaying the images in a special way physically, when the time allows for that. Anyway, the idea is still not concrete and I'm trying to focus on other projects right now.

Saved By PS

I've talked before about doingsome product photo shoot for my nephew and his Rubik cubes (though cubes is not a precise term for that anymore). Since I do not own a dedicated product photography gear (e.g. a tent or light cube), I usually try to improvise, and discover as well.

On two occasions, I've used a white themed set, something close to high-key environment to shoot such products, specially that most of them are contained in white. In all these occasions though, the plastic or acrylic piece underneath was the main problem. It did provide some reflections nicely, but it showed a seam line behind the products. Though I used this seam to fix the horizon tilt, but that doesn't work all the time and not necessarily correct. Quite a considerable time was spent to eliminate and do a surgery to remove this line in Photoshop. What came after, made this a child's play.

On the third occasion, I tried to change my approach and headed to use black themed set; Not close to low-key though as I'm supposed to use more than one speedlite here in various directions. I tried to keep it simple as well, but that didn't work out unfortunately, and I had to go for the plastic sheet for reflections again, as the look was flat and quite simple (in looks that is). Despite moving the speedlite off-center and away from the camera but it did make the image look flat (and I used a bit of on-camera flash to fill the front). Generally speaking, something was missing and I was working in a haste. Anyway, I had other things to finish, so I uploaded these images and showed them to my nephew who was pleased about them but he is no artist - I told him that I was in a haste as I didn't want to keep him waiting for more than week but he said it's fine to wait. Thus, I went through another trial and this time using the plastic sheet underneath for some reflections, but again, problems happened!

To begin with, I had to change the viewing angle (or camera angle that is) and lower it further. I think that way is more interesting to look at than a typical view from the top. After shooting few trials, it was obvious that speedlites are not doing any good for me here in this situation with much flare and unwanted stray lights and even shadows. Thus, I've decided to go ambient and it proved to be quicker in terms of the workflow, and reliable. I think I fell a victim to what Syl Arena described in one of his books as: the eagerness to create light and forgetting the available possibilities. Meaning, the ambient light can be good enough, but still you might try hard (and waste time) to create an interesting light thinking that a good look is only achievable by external lighting, or modified lighting that is. This is wrong, and probably I should have considered the ambient light from the very beginning of the whole thing.
Another problem prevailed though, and it is a lesson for me to learn: Black is quite sensitive to dirt. While shooting on white, dust particles can get overwhelmed by light and eventually disappear from the scene, or almost. However, with black set, the situation was drastic (specially that I didn't wipe the plastic sheet before the work) and that pushed me to work my fingers around with Photoshop again to save the situation and this time using Lens Blur for the lower part of the set, i.e. the reflections. This created a diffused reflection, almost close to reality as if some "matte" material was been used for reflections, and eliminating the dust particles that were spread all over the place. It was then a work for Layer Masks with a delicate brush to specify the areas where it should prevail and where it should be hidden. Gaussian Blur on the other hand would have made quite a mess, so it is better to avoid it in such situations.

I was lucky though with some shots that the dust was not quite spread over the place so a tiny work of cloning or spot healing was just enough to clean the image. However, since the whole process here was shot using my 100mm macro lens (from a distance), I did notice some weird softness in the images despite using high f-number (f/16 here). I'm not quite sure here, is it something has to do with the nature of the lens or indeed my lens is malfunctioning. If it is malfunctioning, then why? Is it fixable? I'm not sure. But sure thing that I have to think of my 100mm lens as my last resort when it comes to normal shooting that is. As for the images, the softness do not have a great impact since they will be used on Instagram in a small size after all, and that will suffice anyway. Now, is it the time to get proper product photography gear? Maybe... specially with this acrylic or plastic piece causing a problematic seam sometimes. I need to finish some stuff first…

Finale

Well, at the moment my mind is racing through to go through some of these projects I've described above and I'm already tired of looking for props. I've at least shot a single shot for the "Scopa" project at the time of typing this. However, I need to be faster, and I must get some proper props ASAP!
On the other hand, I was hoping of getting one image done at least from another project in my mind, inspired by another (folk) Arabic song of Sabah Fakhri [صباح فخري] which involves a globe miniature. All I need to do is shoot just a single picture, but it requires some work with the lighting I presume which would make the process long. Anyhow, I didn't find the proper place I need to shoot it so the whole thing is postponed till I can think of something or some place to do it. That's why I switched to the Scopa project instead and done at least one image from whatever prop I have available at hand.
Meanwhile, I'll keep dreaming about being outside enjoying my time away from the fuss in this mess of a country. I'm getting to the point of being cold, senseless, and careless; careless to the point of not judging my actions or what I say sometimes. We have a bit longer weekend coming by next week, let's see if I can put that to some good use... doubt it.

Blank...

Long time ago, I've stated that a vacation is not a vacation if you don't travel out of Kuwait. This week specifically, life demonstrated for me (again) why is that.
I couldn't do much with my own projects the passing week. My car is still not working and that kind of put me up with hard times. The problem that I thought was simple got complicated and the car won't start all. I'm waiting for the electrician and his solutions in hope. During this time, I'm using my brother's car and I really hate to drive it. I just use it for necessities. This situation makes me drop my plans for visiting Failaka island as I planned prior to the vacation. No car, no photography; the perfect vacation...

Bubble I
Canon EF 50mm + Extension tube, f/4, 25^-1sec, ISO500.

I've taken 2 images before I start my vacation, specifically at work. I wasn't going to post them actually but since there is not much for this week, I'm putting them here. These two images were hard to take because they are macro shots (with extension tubes rather than 100mm macro lens) and without a tripod. The actual process took actually 2 days, one day to notice the texture (on the inner side of my hibiscus mug), and the next to take the picture! Probably this is not how the contemplative photography is supposed to work as I'm currently reading, but I guess some details for such abstracts are nice - somehow gives me some confidence that I do still have an open eye for details!

Bubble II
Canon EF 50mm + Extension tube, f/4, 25^-1sec, ISO500.

On the other hand, I've decided to place an order for some stuff despite the squeeze in my financial situation because of the car. In fact, I was more pushed to place such an order because of the family. Some of them needed some stuff from outside and I thought it is the time to place an order for the time being.

Source: Amazon

My first order is on Amazon for some new books (finally). My habit was to order 3 books, 2 of which are photography-related. However, this time I've ordered only 2 books beside many other stuff for the family members here. The first book is The Wild Side of Photography by Cyril Harnischmacher. I own another book for the same author dedicated to tabletop photography. This book, with quick inspection to random pages and the table of contents, would hopefully give me some insight into some tricks - ticks in the sense of special effects or probably simple solutions for some problems.

Source: Amazon

The second book is dedicated to Product Photography. It might sound a bit like tabletop photography but probably I would find more advices dedicated about commercial aspects of such photography and more information about light formations and settings. I thought maybe I should check out this field a bit in depth (specially after the Coffee Contest that was sponsored by the group). In here, it is one of the common fields of photography that people would ask about (with some gains) beside Portraiture Photography.

Source: B&H

Away from Amazon, I've ordered some items from B&H stores (typically). Even though my wishlist contains a long sequence of lenses as I'm dedicated to have some new wide angle lens with flat perception other than the highly distorted fisheye lenses that I already own. However, I think I didn't make up my mind yet about such lens, beside the narrow budget for the time being. Thus, it was better to delay such an order. Instead, I've placed an order for the RoundFlash which is a product that would help in macro as well as in portraiture. It might act as a beauty dish; a common accessory for portraiture lovers. I just hope it fits my speedlites. This cheap solution came to me like a gift in a time I was thinking of having a ring-flash to help me with my macro shots. Concerned about the high prices for such flashes, I've started to look up cheaper solutions or DIY methods, when I received a newsletter from B&H containing this product. I'm having my hopes up, let's hope my hope won't be without hopes... wha?

Source: B&H

The next toy on the list is the Tote Vision HS-1 Hot Shoe Mount for Tote Vision LCD Monitors. A small gadget just to place my portable monitor on the top of the camera (in the Hot Shoe). This is generally to help me in situations where I need to shoot myself, but that doesn't mean it doesn't help in other situations. This simple gadget would give me a great relief from using one extra tripod or monopod just to hold the portable monitor, or holding the monitor by hands while shooting at critical angles.

Finally on the list is the Kodak 3 x 3" #87B Opaque Infrared Wratten Gel Filter. I'm not sure if the size would suitable for cutting, but anyway I'm having plans to apply this to my fisheye lenses; specially the Canon 15mm because it is the one I use commonly for panoramas. There were many varieties of IR gels with codes like 87B and 87C and I'm not sure what's the difference between them. Most probably the difference is in the range of wavelengths after which waves are allowed through the filter (i.e. the threshold); but how to know this from the code is beyond me and even if I knew, I wouldn't know which one is the best for my own uses! So, let's see how it feels to do a panorama on infrared. I'm pretty sure the exposure times will be exaggerated in a ridiculous way!

Now all I have to do is wait for this delivery and pray for some good luck to "enjoy" my vacation, or whatever remained of it...