12th
Colorful details how-to
I have used following setup for many photos of various object details already, so I guess it might be useful to share the “how to” here.
Although i’m using fancy macro flashes (Nikon SB-R200), it can be replicated with any small flash you have around, and all the rest is quite ingenious cheap stuff.
So here it is:
With most of my details shots, I want to have side-lights to create interesting (colored) edge highlights on the objects. For that, I have two SB-R200’s on sides from the photo subject, usually gelled with Rosco filters (in this case it’s blue on right, and pink+violet on left one).
It might work with just directly aiming the flashes at subject (old hard drive in this case), but usually the bigger the light area is in relation to the subject, the better (if better = even lit areas and softer shadows), so to make the light source area bigger I’m bouncing them both to V shaped pieces of paper (the bounce is loosing the power, but the final power was 1/2 so there was still some reserve).
The sidelights alone would create nice edge highlights, but leave the main body of the drive quite dark. Also I wanted to get some color on the main surface of the drive - so there goes third flash, gelled to orange, aimed at the white wall behind the stage, bouncing back light from behind and from top, to create nice colored fill on the whole object.
And the result:
