Christmas Came Early...

[Highflyingclive]

I received an early Christmas present... a friend of mine has just upgraded his camera - and gave me his old Fujifilm S1 Pro. Wow!

An obsolete camera, of course... but it is a joy to be able to use all my old 35mm Nikon lenses again.

Here is my first attempt...

Criticism from real photographers would be welcomed!

Lightbox - two polypropylene lever-arch files.

Lighting - three halogen desk lamps.

Lens - Nikkor 35-70mm macro, F22, 0.25 second exposure.

Post production - brightened in "levels", background fluff cloned out. Nothing clever - I have neither the skill nor the software... I don't have PhotoShop, I'm using Micrographics Picture Publisher 10.0 - an application that came free with a computer magazine, several years ago.

[Usil]

I am looking at this from a friends computer and not the best monitor but I have the following comments.

Lighting: Not bad. A few shadows exist that you can work on if you want to fine tune the light arrangement but good first effort.

F22: While you will get maximum depth of field with this setting it is not the sharpest setting for this lens. F8 to F11 would be sharper.

Central focus: The monitor I am seeing this with makes it very difficult to see exactly what you used for the central focus. In animals, the eye must be in focus no matter what. For watches, I believe the hands and text on the face must be the point of focus. At a macro setting on a watch this probably means manual focusing. The hands just do not look clear to me but as I said, it could be my monitor.

Positioning: Looks good.

Not sure if you used any post processing but a 'little' unsharp mask looks to be needed.

Good job.

Usil

[Highflyingclive]

@Usil... thanks, some useful advice there... I appreciate you taking the time.