Camera Labs

Hi there!

Have you noticed how the majority of macro subjects are flowers or insects?

I was taking a photo of a lettuce for someone the other day and was surprised at how beautiful the leaves looked. Maybe I was photographing too much veg that day, but I reckon this is up there with many flowers!

Ahem, anyway, nothing special about the equipment or setup - a standard kit lens stopped down to f18, natural store lighting and only a slight adjustment to the Levels in Photoshop to ensure the background material turned completely black. So now allow me to present, veg in space!



Gordon

Very nice shot, unusual subject, Gordon!
Did you "manufacture" the black background? Or how did you do it??

_________________
Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Hi Thomas, glad you liked the shot!

I literally just placed the lettuce on a black tablecloth in a shop and fortuitously the indoor lighting and exposure rendered the tablecloth virtually perfect black without any further tweaking.

To make sure though, I went into Photoshop afterwards and clipped the first 5 or 10 shadow levels... so no need for a cut-out or artifical background!

I was also surprised how the mixture of daylight, incandescents and fluorescents in the store didn't mess up the white balance too much! Maybe they all cancelled each other out!

Gordon

Nice white balance, yeah But you didn't tell us, what camera you used for this shot.
And as you don't post on flickr, we can also not see what the other parameters of this shot are

_________________
Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses