Jeff Fleisher  


Gears by Jeff Fleisher

June 2021 - Gears

About the Image(s)

I thought I would enter a picture that is a little different for me. I took this picture during a Mike Moats Macro Photography workshop. We went from station to station working with different props and this station had a pile of gears. They were all shapes, sizes, colors and materials. I shot this with my Nikon D7200 at ISO 400, f/22 and 0.8 seconds. I used my 200 mm Micro lens. This was shot inside with room lighting. I tried to capture the essence of the gears and highlight the glass jewel set at the 1/3 point in the image. This is a single image with very little post processing. I adjusted some of the highlight and shadow levels and added a little contrast but that was all.


This round’s discussion is now closed!
6 comments posted




 
I've taken the Mike Moats macro workshop and remember all the little items he has to use for photography practice and how much fun the workshop was. It's nice to do different things now and then. This is a pleasant image and the composition is nice. I might have
put more variation in the gear colors underneath, although it might look messy with too much variation. You handled the highlights in the glass jewel nicely.

Why did you shoot with an ISO of 400? Mike moats was big on keeping his ISO at 100 so I'm curious to see if he's changed. It's interesting to me that the same set of gears and trinkets are used in all his workshops, yet each image is so different.
  Posted: 06/18/2021 13:50:50
 
Glad to hear you took one of Mike Moats classes. He is really good! Are you a member of his online macro club?

I could have shot at ISO 100 since I was on a tripod but the exposure time was about a second as it was. I shot at f/22 to get some depth of field. Since we were moving from table to table with a variety of lighting I just set it at ISO 400 and left it there.   Posted: 06/18/2021 14:57:09



Interesting. I am impressed by ability to do this with room lighting; I have not worked much with room (or unassisted natural) lighting.   Posted: 06/18/2021 14:45:43



 
Hi Jeff,
I like this image a lot. One can stare at it for a while and still see something new. I like the lighting, the colors, and your ability to get the jewel to be clear and not blown out. Clearly, I need to look into Mike Moats' workshops! This image and how you describe his workshop are right up my alley.   Posted: 06/24/2021 08:10:15



Charles Ginsburgh   Charles Ginsburgh
(Group 63)
I have also attended a Mike Moats' workshop, and they are worth the time and cost. He does have many types of materials for subjects, and he enthusiastically encourages you to try different things. In this image, I think that you have struck a fine balance between the watch gears and empty space. Often we get so wrapped up in the process of capturing images of small things that we lose sight of the continuing importance of composition in the overall images. As you note, using a tripod really expands your ability to employ a varied set of camera settings. Here it allowed you to use a longer exposure to counter-act the diffused indoors lighting and small aperture (f/22). Nice Job.

In regard to the ISO discussion it used to be that 'experts' have always encouraged that we shoot as low as ISO as possible (ISO 100 or so), and while this is not a bad general thought, with today's newer cameras and the ability to deal with image noise effectively this is less of a hard-and-fast rule. Now it's should be that you can use as high ISO as you can without adding too much noise. How much is "too much noise"? That depends upon the scene, subject, your camera's capability and your ability to deal with noise in post processing. With my newer Canon R6, using the latest version of Topaz Denoise AI I now find that I can easily go to ISO 2,500 - 4,000 without any significant issues. My upper end with my Canon d5 MK IV body (a very capable camera) used to be ISO 800 in general and ISO 1,000 for sports photography. These newer capabilities have really changed my mental gymnastics regarding the exposure triangle when I shoot.
  Posted: 06/25/2021 13:39:45
Peter Newman   Peter Newman
(Groups 20 & 79)
Charles, you brought up an interesting point about ISO. My feeling is that given a choice of an image that is either: inappropriately blurry, no image; or noisy, I will settle for noise, within reason.   Posted: 06/25/2021 20:43:37