Manfred, perhaps the light was not the right one. Or even the angle...
Why not one in detail with a couple in OOF background ?
With a long tele...
Manfred, it is not working at the moment. I think you will have a lot of trouble with all the reflections, good luck.
Cheers Ole
If you got hold of the raw material because you have a valve/tube amp, then (a) hats off to your excellent taste and (b) why not take a shot of the amp in the dark with the tubes glowing happily?
How about lighting them from below ? Stand them on a sheet of white perspex.
I guess these are the same sort of valves I had to sit and wait for five minutes to warm up before I could watch my favourite TV program as a kid ?
Would this scene be suitable for focus stacking as an alternative to really small apertures with consequent diffraction?
It seems that the valves themselves (specular reflections, markings) could provide good control points for image alignment, and one could then use the lens' sharpness sweet f-number for maximum acutance ...
Those are they, Peter, as I'm sure you know. I used to fix those TVs long ago. Much more hazardous were the Marshall guitar amps with their KT88 output valves running on 1000VDC HT. It behooved one to discharge the HT capacitors prior to working on the amp. I only forgot once ...