Vortex/Lighting

Hello all,

Being cold outside I am having to play indoors and tonight have been trying to take pictures of a vortex in a column of water, one of my results is here:




It's good fun and is providing some (imo) interesting images, but I am a complete luddite when it comes to lighting. For this picture I used a flash in the hot-shoe on the camera and I like the vortex but cannot avoid getting the shadow of the glass in the background (lower quarter of the background) - I guess the solution might be simply to have the background further away (although I have limited space in my 'studio' (kitchen)) or I guess I could do something more involved with lights, or off-camera flash (light from the side?) etc. to eliminate the background shadow(?) -grateful if anyone can offer me advice. If this is very noddy then please excuse me, but I would be keen to understand better how to light subjects and figure this forum must be a good place to start

Regards

Mat

Personally I can't see the appeal but you need to get the flash off camera and probably use some reflectors as well to get some real sparkle. You can get a wireless trigger from the sales bit of this site that works well for me. You also need to be able to control the output of the flash (I think) and maybe buying an older manual unit would offer this?

Mike

Hi Matt.
You can get some flash triggers here cheap and cheerfull but they are perfect for this sort of thing. I am currently experimenting with water drops and finding getting the background right one of the challenges, am reflecting flash off A4 photo paper onto the subject, gel filters in front of the flash give interesting colours in the water, and setting WB to Tungsten gives a cool overall effect. How are generating the vortex : I like the look of it.

Davex.

Try reflecting the flash off coloured paper or (matt)plastics, you don't *need* gels.

Set the flash to around 1/8 or lower, depending on bounce distance. Anything decent - like Sigma 500 Super, Vivitar 285, Lumopro LP120, AF360 should be able (in manual mode) to drop that low.

Try also using a bigger glass (vase, maybe?) to drop the shadow and also maybe a white background....

Bret

Thanks for the advice folks - I shall have to play some more I think. The vortex is created by a cheap milk-shake mixer which is effectively a half pint plastic 'glass' with a spinner in the bottom... I'll have a go with getting the flash off the camera and trying some coloured papers and different WB settings. Anything which requires investment in kit (even very 'economically advantageous' kit) will have to wait as I have sworn off procurement for a month as I spent too much at Christmas...

Cheers

Mat

Looking forward to seeing some good shots. One more thing; Have you considered using cooking oil : You may get less distracting bubbles.

Davex.

Gosh that's a good idea - thanks - I might try that one out (oil supply allowing). I also thought of maybe adding a blob of food colour to see if I could get a streak of colour... gonna have to play this weekend if get the chance

Regards

Mat