Jimminy Cricket Final Part

[JBW]

A few nights back I spotted this cricket in our patio. I enjoy slow shutter close-up / macro so I went for the camera.

Shot one was at thirty seconds, two was 2.5 and the wide view was shot at fifteen seconds.

Each shot comes with pluses and minuses. The additional light in shots two and three certainly add to the power. Shot three comes with a softness and fullness that comes with minimal light and maximum exposure.

As always, shot in our garden/temple somewhere in the Philippines.

Brian

[Shadowman]

Nice efforts.

[JBW]

Nice efforts.

It was a fun time

[Round Tuit]

Hi Brian - Once again you have me confused. I don't know what you mean by maximum exposure. If you check the CiC tutorial, you will see that the exposure is a measure of the quantity of light hitting the sensor of your camera. It doesn't matter whether you expose for 1 second at f/2.8 or 1 minute at f/22, the resulting exposure is the same if the light remains constant. And as long as the exposure is the same, the tonal range, contrast and color rendition will be the same. What will change is the depth of field and the effect of motion blur.
The 3 shots of your cricket all have approximately the same exposure according to the histogram. The difference that we see in the shot is a result of the different quality of the lighting - not the quantity. Shot #1 used harsh top light, shot #2 used side lighting and the last one used front light. The second and third also used slightly softer light than the first.

[DanK]

Andre beat me to it. If you had illuminated the three shots the same, the only difference your camera settings would create is a difference in depth of field.

for example, if you double exposure time and close the lens by 1 stop, the exposures would be identical, and apart from DOF, so would the images.

[JBW]

Sorry Andre and Dan, I really don't mean to confuse. To clarify terms:

SHUTTER SPEED

A camera's shutter determines when the camera sensor will be open or closed to incoming light from the camera lens. The shutter speed specifically refers to how long this light is permitted to enter the camera. "Shutter speed" and "exposure time" refer to the same concept, where a faster shutter speed means a shorter exposure time.

By the Numbers. Shutter speed's influence on exposure is perhaps the simplest of the three camera settings: it correlates exactly 1:1 with the amount of light entering the camera. For example, when the exposure time doubles the amount of light entering the camera doubles. It's also the setting that has the widest range of possibilities:

When I said maximum exposure i meant that aside from 'Bulb' 30s. is as long as my shutter stays open.

As for ISO I shoot at base which is 100. Least amount of noise.

When shooting close to Macro I tend to use F/16. It is a nice compromise between F/14 (the sweet spot of the camera for sharpness) and F/18 which has a better DoF but isn't quite as sharp.

The 3 shots of your cricket all have approximately the same exposure according to the histogram. The difference that we see in the shot is a result of the different quality of the lighting - not the quantity. Shot #1 used harsh top light, shot #2 used side lighting and the last one used front light. The second and third also used slightly softer light than the first.

I truly did confuse you with the lighting. Number 1 was shot with soft and dim top and to the left lighting. Number two was shot with the addition (as mentioned in the post) of a flashlight positioned slightly to the crickets left and front. The light stayed in the same position for shot 3 but I changed position.

Eureka I just noticed my typo in the original post. It is shot 1 (one) that had minimal light and maximum exposure.

Hope that helps.
Brian

[Manfred M]

Brian - your use of non-standard terminology is causing some confusion. You may understand what you are trying to say, but the rest of us don't necessarily follow. By maximum exposure, you are in fact writing about the longest shutter speed that your camera is capable of, outside of shooting using bulb mode.

Most fields, including photography, have their own jargon and when people use it consistently other people who are knowledgeable in the field will understand what they are saying or writing.

As Andre mentioned in #5, most of us think of exposure as a combination of shutter speed and aperture for a given ISO value.

That being said, I still don't understand what you are are trying to do here. I think you are showing here are three different methods of lighting your subject and that you are using a fairly narrow aperture in order to maximize depth of field, without getting too much softening from diffraction. The shutter speed seems to be an outcome based on using a low ISO (100) to get the best response from the sensor for the given light you are using.

Have I summed things up correctly?

[Round Tuit]

Brian - Thanks for clarifying that. I can see where the following quote from the CiC tutorial might have led you to believe that exposure and exposure time are synonymous:

By the Numbers. Shutter speed's influence on exposure is perhaps the simplest of the three camera settings: it correlates exactly 1:1 with the amount of light entering the camera. For example, when the exposure time doubles the amount of light entering the camera doubles. It's also the setting that has the widest range of possibilities:

There is a linear relationship between the exposure time and exposure but the two are very different. The former is a time while the latter is an amount of light.
You also described the quality of the light in non photographic terms. In every day life, we think of dim light as being soft and bright light as being hard. In photographic terminology, because the intensity of the light has little effect on the final picture, hard and soft light refer respectively to lighting that creates hard and soft shadows regardless of intensity. So in photographic terms, your first shot is illuminated by hard light and the other two by softer light even though the light used in the first was dimmer than the other two.
I hope that I did not confuse you totally with this but I think that I understand what you were trying to say.
Having said all that, I like your third shot best. The background colour complements the cricket nicely.

André

[JBW]

Brian - Thanks for clarifying that. I can see where the following quote from the CiC tutorial might have led you to believe that exposure and exposure time are synonymous:

There is a linear relationship between the exposure time and exposure but the two are very different. The former is a time while the latter is an amount of light.
You also described the quality of the light in non photographic terms. In every day life, we think of dim light as being soft and bright light as being hard. In photographic terminology, because the intensity of the light has little effect on the final picture, hard and soft light refer respectively to lighting that creates hard and soft shadows regardless of intensity. So in photographic terms, your first shot is illuminated by hard light and the other two by softer light even though the light used in the first was dimmer than the other two.
I hope that I did not confuse you totally with this but I think that I understand what you were trying to say.
Having said all that, I like your third shot best. The background colour complements the cricket nicely.

André

Oh but I do miss the language of astronomy. Spots on the sun are called sunspots. A light year is the distance light travels in a year. Flares on the sun are called Solar flares.

On the up side I finally understand the difference between soft and hard light. It has nothing to do with the light and everything to do with the shadows.

Gotta agree that the third shot does pop.
Brian

[Tom Barry]

The third shot does pop, and I do like it.

[Manfred M]

On the up side I finally understand the difference between soft and hard light. It has nothing to do with the light and everything to do with the shadows. :eek

While that is the most obvious manifestation of soft light, the smoothness and the way it wraps around a subject are just as important as the softer shadows.

[Round Tuit]

While that is the most obvious manifestation of soft light, the smoothness and the way it wraps around a subject are just as important as the softer shadows.

Less obvious but probably more important

[Round Tuit]

The third shot does pop, and I do like it.

It does but then so does this:



it all depends on your definition

P.S. I will take this down if you want me to.

[JBW]

It does but then so does this:



it all depends on your definition

P.S. I will take this down if you want me to.

Don't you dare take it down. It's not often people darken one of my shots