Technical Assignment: Still Life

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Lecture Notes:

  • 4 Stop Range educated guess for reproduction but affects contrast. Appears Flat and Muddy
  • 7 Stop Range 0 to 255 or 0% to 100%. Pure Black to Pure White Dynamic Range
  • 5 Stop Range 14-20 to 235 – 247 or 5% to 95%. Textural Range Preserves Highlight and Shadow Detail.
    • 5 stop range is our goal as it preserves the most detail for print reproduction.
  • Underexposing preserves detail in highlights.

Research:

Vanitas Still Life:

  • Paintings purchased by rich people who were self-aware of the wealth they accumulated.
  • Ironic that the Paintings themselves became valuable objects

Symbolism

  • Skulls, Clocks, Candles Flowers – Death, Transience or impermanence of Life
  • Rotten Fruit – Aging and the passing of time
    • Peaches – Truth and Salvation
    • Apple – Wisdom, Temptation Original Sin
  • Soap Bubbles – Brevity of Life.
  • Jewels, Expensive Cloth – Wealth
  • Sheet Music, Quill – Vain Pursuits of mankind
  • Books – Curiousity
  • Arms and Armor Authority and Power
  • Medical Tools Relaity of the human body and it’s multiple points of failure

Measurements:

  • Subject to Camera Lens: 18”
  • Subject to background: 36”
  • Strobe to Subject: 14”
  • Strobe to Camera Lens: 15”
  • 48”x22” Diffusion Flat to Subject: 18”
  • Camera Height: 36”
  • Table Height: 32”
  • Back Edge of Table to Background: 17”

Equipment Used

  • Canon 5D mkIII
  • 50mm f/1.8 (Nifty Fifty)
  • 1x Profoto Strobe with Large Rectangle Softbox
  • 2x Pocket Wizard Transmitter/Receivers
  •  Foba Asaba Camera Stand
  • Foam Core White Diffusion Reflector
  • Grey Card

Camera Information:

  • Canon 5D mkIII Tethered to M1 MacBook Pro 13”
  • Shutter Speed 1/125th of a second
  • Canon 50mm f/1.8
  • Aperature f/11
  • Exposure Mode Manual
  • White Balance Manually set to Flash
  • ISO 100

Lighting Setup

Critique and Analysis:

In addition to learning how to setup and use studio strobes, operate cameras and light meters to create proper exposures for a still life, the major goals of this group technical project is to master the arts of communication, pre-planning and time management.

But by far the most important component of this assignment is to experience and understand how critical it is to preserve highlight and shadow detail with proper exposure. By the end of our second class period, I had met with my group mates and we formulated a plan. I took the driver’s seat, perhaps we call that being the director. My classmates were excellent in helping to shoot this assignment. They responded to my directives well, fetched equipment and helped adjust lights without any complaints.

Deciding to keep it simple; I grabbed three objects from home that were not too reflective and had some texture to them. Odd numbers make for more interesting subjects and not having to contend with reflections is one less thing to worry about for this first assignment. I wanted there to be a wide swing in contrast between the objects, so I got two of my black microphones and a yellowish tan dog skull I had collected.

The group made sure to have a studio and equipment checked out ahead of time in order to maximize our shoot schedule.  We used my Canon 5DmkIII and an EF50mm along with a single Profoto strobe unit from the Equipment Cage and a white foam board served as a reflective flat. We used a Sekonic incident light, Pocket Wizard transmitters, a nice camera stand in lieu of a tripod and various C-Stands and sandbags to hold the C-Stands steady.

Our instructor directed us to meter the strobe at our subject, adjust the strobe power until we reached an aperture of f/11 @ 1/125th of a second shutter speed on ISO100 using an external light meter to measure. The idea is to get the meter to match decided upon camera settings. We then made a test image, tethered to LrC on my laptop so we could make immediate assessments to the image. In LrC we moused over the highlight region and looked at the RGB numbers we achieved in the histogram.

In the highlight areas of the image we are targeting RGB numbers for preserving detail is between 90% and 95%. Any higher than that and printable detail in the highlights becomes lost. If we clip those highlights, no amount of post-production will get that detail back. The same is true for shadow detail however we want to achieve numbers at 5% or above to preserve shadow detail. Cameras are capable of achieve a 7 stop dynamic range; 0%-100%. This is pure black to pure white. Between 5% and 95% is called a 5 stop tonal range and is the range we want to use in order to achieve printable detail. If we want to create images that have pure black and pure white, we can do that in post production. Our best bet is to expose in the 5 stop range so that we can make those creative decisions in our post production workflow. Dependent upon software; these number may also represent as whole integers as opposed to percentages. 0-255 is the 7 stop dynamic range while 235-247 is how the 5 stop tonal represents in RGB.

At about 85% on a “correctly exposed” image; the highlight RGB numbers on the test were a little on the low side when properly metered. Opening up the highlights with the exposure slider in LrC by about 6/10ths of a stop brought our highlights up our target numbers. This is revealing that my 5DmkIII is natively underexposing and I should be thinking about defaulting to a different ISO setting on my meter. To mitigate this native underexposure, we raised the power on our strobe 6/10ths of a stop. These assessments were made on an Image shot with a Tamron 85mm SP f/1.8. Swapping out and test shooting with an EF 50mm f/1.8 revealed a further 7/10ths of a stop needed to be added to strobe power in order to get properly exposed highlights. Perhaps better glass will be the antidote to

The final directive of the assignment was to bracket the scene image exposing down 4 stops and up 4 stops from correct exposure in order to see the effects of improperly exposing images. Changing aperture effects the strobe exposure. Without changing strobe power and opening the aperture up; we begin to overexpose the strobe; as we stop down our aperture we begin to underexpose the strobe. The moral of the story is, if we decide to change our aperture for any reason, we will also need to change the strobe power and re-meter. This can also be achieved by leaving the aperture where it is and raising and lowering the power output of the strobes.

Recall that f/11 is our correctly exposed aperture We bracketed from f/2.8 up to f/22. The following contact sheets show the results of under and overexposing as well as how futile it is to attempt to fix this by compensating the exposure adjustment in post processing. The first contact sheet shows what happens to our images when we under and over expose the scene.

The second contact sheet demonstrates the affects of “fixing” the exposure in post production. Compensated underexposed images appear to be flat, lacking in contrast and missing fidelity in color. Meanwhile the compensated overexposed images have lost all highlight detail; especially if you overexpose more than one stop.

 The craftsman is someone who can cut corners but doesn’t. This was an excellent exercise driving home the importance and craftsmanship of making proper exposures, doing the work of metering and analyzing your test shots, understanding how accurately you camera meters and compensating in camera. I think the most valuable lesson here is that proper exposure gives you the most data available to be able to work your images with editing. There is no “fix it in post”. The mindset should be “make the image the best it can be”, then you can do whatever you’d like in post.