Still Life

[Joshuashaw]

Currently doing a still life project in Photography at college, I am using a spray paint can as my desired object. I know the ISO setting should 100, but what about shutter speed and aparature? The teacher told us shutter speed should be at 60th of a second, but whats this when adjusting the shutter speed on my D80? I presume the aparature depends on the light in the room, should I just use the specfic shutter setting on the camera and let the cam work out aparature? Any help much appreciated.

 

[pxl8]

Depending on the light in the room you might not be able to use ISO 100 and 1/60s - you may find you can't get a wide enough aperture on your lens. If that's the case you either need to increase the ISO or lower the shutter speed to get a well exposed shot.

I wonder if the tutor suggested 1/60s on the assumption you'd be using flash heads rather than available light?

 

[Joshuashaw]

He advised on 1/60s on assumption we was shooting in the studio at college, and the camera he was teaching us all on had no flash, just the flash stands (are they called?) If so, any idea of what I should be shooting on which should produce reasonably desent images, don't have to be groundbreaking. The task in hand is shoot the desired object using variety of light direction, I'm just using a normal desk light.

 

[POSTIE22]

Set your camera on SHUTTER priority, adjust to 60th sec and then move up the ISO scale ie: 100, 200,400,etc and see how your histogram looks on the back of your D80.

 

[pxl8]

By no flash just stands do you mean there wasn't a flash sitting on top of the camera but there were big flash/lights on stands?

If so then that's probably why 1/60s was suggested.

As to what you should do...

Build a set of some sort - just a roll of paper pinned to the wall and coming down over a small table will do the job. Camera on tripod with cable release or timer delay. Move the light around to get the effect you want - you might try playing with some white card as a reflector to bounce of the light back into the shadow areas.

As for camera settings, try shooting in Av mode, set the aperture to a suitable value, f/5.6 or f/8 maybe and let the camera work out the shutter speed - I expect it will be quite slow in those conditions. You might also need to use some exposure compensation depending on the brightness of the background - if it's dark you'll need negative EC and positive EC if it's a bright background.

Set it up and just play, check the results, adjust and learn what works and what doesn't.

 

[Joshuashaw]

I do have a set up at the mo, I'll get a pictured posted in 2 mins.

 

[Joshuashaw]

Heres the simple set up, excuse the camera from my phone & the untidyness.

 

[pxl8]

I would try getting the black cloth further away from the can as I think you'll have trouble with getting it to stay black.

The other option would be to have nothing there, just dark room which will be so underexposed it will just be black.

 

[jerry12953]

I see you have the camera on a tripod - you can use a long shutter speed to get the depth of field you need, then. No need to change the ISO. Keep it at 100 for max. quality.

 

[Ally]

If your looking for a pure black background used black velvet, as long as you don't put light onto it you'll have a 100% black background. Just make sure you have enough depth of field depending on the effect you want and then adjust the shutter speed to get the properly brighness in the photo. As you have your camera on a tripod the shutter speed doesn't matter.