A few months ago, I got a Canon 320EX speedlite. I finally got a chance to really test it out. When I first started out in photography, I told myself and others I'd never use artificial lights like flashes or studio strobes. Looking back now, I can tell you that I just didn't understand enough about lighting and how it effects photography. Great pictures have a lot to do with how great the shots lit.
Since the passed few days have been in the 100s! I decided to cool things down with some cool pictures of a cool drink. I'm using my Canon 60D, a 50mm f/1.8, and a 320EX speedlite flash. My camera was set on manual mode with the shutter speed at 1/250. There's a white plastic-like table cloth as the backdrop, and I turned off all the lights in the room. It's a pretty simple setup.
First things first, I had to find a glass to use. Opening up my sister's cabinets, I looked for the most interesting glass I could find. Then I ran across this sexy glass. As you can see, I used some plumb juice because I though it'd look like wine. Turns out that the plumb juice was so dark and opaque, it didn't produce the effect I was looking for. Plus it smelled nasty to me. :( Testing out a bottle that was laying around, I figured that I'd need a clear liquid. And guess what fit the bill? Hawaiian Punch! Hawaiian Punch is just perfect for quenching your thirst, but it's perfect for late night photography experiments too. lol
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| Over Exposed | Better Exposed |
In the left picture, the glass is over exposed even though the flash was set at 1/64. To solve this problem, I simply moved the glass about 6" away from the light source. Abracadabra! A much nicer picture. Now that the shot is looking good, time to push the flash to see what high speed shots I could get.
If you've tired to drop a piece of ice into a narrow wine glass, then you probably know how frustrated I was trying to get a stupid piece of ice into this glass. Trying to get the ice into the glass was one thing, but trying to snap a shot of it at the right time was doubly hard. Really, I was the stupid one. Now that I think about it, I should have used a glass with a wider opening. Duh!
Canon 50mm f/1.8
First things first, I had to find a glass to use. Opening up my sister's cabinets, I looked for the most interesting glass I could find. Then I ran across this sexy glass. As you can see, I used some plumb juice because I though it'd look like wine. Turns out that the plumb juice was so dark and opaque, it didn't produce the effect I was looking for. Plus it smelled nasty to me. :( Testing out a bottle that was laying around, I figured that I'd need a clear liquid. And guess what fit the bill? Hawaiian Punch! Hawaiian Punch is just perfect for quenching your thirst, but it's perfect for late night photography experiments too. lol
