Posts tagged mushroom

It’s been pretty overcast today so not the most exciting in terms of light so today I created my own, in a non divinical sort of way. I’m posting 2 shots, a sort of before and after the addition of some directional light. As it’s autumn the fungi are starting to come out and these make great photographic subjects. This one is a fly agaric, or a close relative, which is actually a toadstool. They are the traditional, Alice in wonderland, mind expanding type mushroom and well worth a shot if you find one.

The light however was less than ideal, luckily I had my 580II EX and an off camera cord, if you can get the light off camera, do it. These cords retain all the automatic ttl functions so you don’t have to worry about flash powers and such if it’s a bit in depth. I prefer to keep the flash on manual as it’s a bit more predictable.

70mm, ISO100, f/11, 1/20

The first shot was straight out the camera (on aperture priority) just to show how it would look if you just wanted flat, overcast light. It was taken at ISO100, f11, 1/20, 70mm. I wanted a smallish aperture to maximise the depth of field.

It’s okay for a macro shot but not the most interesting in terms of light, I could warm it up using the white balance during the RAW conversion but it wouldn’t change the direction of the light, this is where the off camera cord and flash come into their own.

The next shot I have attached the flash which has a diffuser and a CTO gel to give that warm, sunset type light, I also opened the aperture to f/8 and reduced the shutter to 1/80. So from the last shot the aperture has been opened by 1 stop (f/11 -> f8) and the shutter has closed by 2 stops (1/20 -> 1/40 -> 1/80) so we have reduced the ambient light by 1 stop, however it looks brighter as I’ve zapped it with an external flash gun. The flash output on the 580  was set at 1/4 power and the zoom to 24mm and it was about 2 feet to camera left.

65mm, ISO100, 1/80, f/7.1 (pretty much f/8)

The 2nd shot is a marked improvement and I actually packed up after getting it as I was quite happy with it but I thought what if I wanted to do a light tutorial for the blog, what else could I do? Well I looked at the LCD and thought the background could do with being a little darker to draw more attention to the toadstool (for anyone looking at the out of focus, under exposed grass on the right). Luckily this was a very easy adjustment to make. I could leave the flash how it was as I was happy with the levels on the Fly agaric, but to reduce the background light I just needed to speed up the shutter from 1/80 to 1/200 (about a stop and a half). How come the shroom didn’t get darker you ask? Easy the flash only cares about aperture as the pulse of light is the same if you have the shutter set to 1/200 or 1 second. The toadstool would have got darker if I had pulled the light back further from the subject or lighter if I’d have increased the ISO (this would also effect ambient) but I didn’t.

Final Shot ISO100, 68mm, f/7.1, 1/200

We are left with this last shot that looks (in my opinion at least) as it was taken during a nice sunrise or sunset as opposed to midday in the drizzling rain. Obviously if the conditions had been anything like I was trying to convey I would have said nuts to this fungus and swung the camera round to the mirror like lake I was next to that would have looked like something out of a fairytale, instead it looked like the river Styx! Thanks for reading guys.