Honest macro: Pocket Watch Engraving

[JBW]

A few days ago the LCD on my camera died. Neither my neck nor my back is up to the twisting that outside macro using the eye finder would require. However after a wee bit of rearranging I had enough room to do some tethered shooting.

The set up was simple. A little sticky stuff to hold the pocket watch in place. Two low powered well diffused flash lights and me moving everything around to get an honest macro with lots of shadows. ISO 100 ~ Shutter Speed of thirteen seconds and F/14 helped with the details and the shadows.

Tomorrow, or maybe the next day I'll see if I can center the circular and have some more fun.

[xpatUSA]

As with some other of your compositions, I find it a bit dark:



The histogram tells all. A mean brightness of about 44/255 is pretty low for what used to be a bright metal surface. The 'mode' value of 16 tells us that is the brightness level with the highest number of counts in the selection.

Perhaps some work in Levels - although it is realized that you seem to have a leaning towards sombre ...

Interesting file-name. OT, but FastStone Viewer does that to me and worse sometimes. It likes to take all the EXIF from the last file opened and embed it into the currently-being-edited image.

[DanK]

I agree with Ted; it's dark enough that the details don't stand out as much as they could. As one possible direction for your consideration, here is version with some lightening (both curves and levels) and a gradient to even out the lighting from left to right:

[JBW]

As with some other of your compositions, I find it a bit dark:



The histogram tells all. A mean brightness of about 44/255 is pretty low for what used to be a bright metal surface. The 'mode' value of 16 tells us that is the brightness level with the highest number of counts in the selection.

Perhaps some work in Levels - although it is realized that you seem to have a leaning towards sombre ...

Interesting file-name. OT, but FastStone Viewer does that to me and worse sometimes. It likes to take all the EXIF from the last file opened and embed it into the currently-being-edited image.

It was my first tethered shooting since I switched to sessions in C1. I didn't realize that the shots automatically got embedded in whatever session was open.

The bright metal surface never was bright. And after 20 years of being broken and kept as a a keep sake it is really n ot bright.

And as you say I do tend to shoot 'somber'.

[JBW]

I agree with Ted; it's dark enough that the details don't stand out as much as they could. As one possible direction for your consideration, here is version with some lightening (both curves and levels) and a gradient to even out the lighting from left to right:

No, no, no! I agree that it could be brighter. However I spent a bit of time and effort adjusting two gradient masks. Top left to bottom right and bottom left to top right. I really like the effect of the two lines moving through the shot.

An even gradient from left to right is just sooooooo flattening.