3/1/2020 - 3/7/2020 - Egg
Byron-
When someone says they candled the eggs, I'm sure you are familiar with the process. If you are not, it is the process of holding the egg in front of a bright light so you can see if the egg is fertilized or not. If it is fertilized you will see a chicken fetus growing inside. If not, you will just see a yolk floating in the albumen. I think I will use that as my fake name when a scammer calls. I'll be Al Bumen. With this egg, the yolk looks like it is at the top. There is no chicken fetus inside. My friend Ann Le says it is delicious to eat an egg shortly before it hatches. That's a treat in Vietnam.
I cut a hole in a piece of black foam core to hold the egg up and had a piece of black poster board as the background. A strobe light was positioned under the egg so the light would go straight up, thru the hole and into the egg.
Crop sensor camera, 85mm lens, f8, Godox TT600 shooting through a snoot.
I cut a hole in a piece of black foam core to hold the egg up and had a piece of black poster board as the background. A strobe light was positioned under the egg so the light would go straight up, thru the hole and into the egg.
Crop sensor camera, 85mm lens, f8, Godox TT600 shooting through a snoot.
Darin-
Kevin-
I believe this is the third time I have captured an egg as a WPOTM image, not counting anytime I might have photographed an egg containing hummingbird nest, or perhaps some chocolate eggs for an easter themed photo,.
Eggs again. It’s feeling like familiar territory by now, which means that the challenge of doing it differently keep increasing. In January of 2015, when Eggs was our theme I photographed an egg dropping onto a sheet of glass that was sitting on top of a black background. Captured mid-break thanks to TriggerTrap...
Then in October of 2015, when the theme was Squished, I placed an egg in a vise, and squeezed it just enough to crack the shell.
So of course I wanted to show yet another egg break, but from an entirely different perspective this time. My solution? Take out that sheet of glass, and place my Nikon Z7 directly below, photographing upward!
The image you are about to see required a very complicated setup that actually took some time to suss out. Setting up a tripod nearly flat on the ground. Aiming it up at the glass sheet suspended between two sawhorses. Once it was there it was impossible to review the images on the camera. So I used my CamRanger to control basics of the camera and send the images to my iPad where I could view them. Add in two light-stands holding two flash units, white reflector cards to bounce light up to the breaking egg, black cards to mask the area surrounding the egg so that the light didn’t bounce off the garage ceiling above, and more. Michelle assisted by climbing a step ladder and dropping the eggs onto the correct spot on the glass.
Also, I had the relocate this setup three different times, the first time because a ceiling fixture, that should have been far out of focus, was showing up in the frame. The second time because I keep seeing a dark circle surrounding the egg, before finally realizing it was a reflection of the lens, the only piece of equipment sticking up through the foam-core below. And finally after solving that problem by positioning the camera at a slight angle rather than pure vertical, the dang garage door opener was visible on the ceiling so I need to move everything yet again.
Finally, after having to get Byron’s help a couple of weeks ago when I needed ice cubes dropped for my Bucket List photo, I needed help again for this Eggs image. After having been disappointed in and returning the Miops triggering device I had ordered from B&H Photo, I had ordered a Cactus Laser Trigger from Amazon and expected it to arrive on Tuesday. But no delivery arrived. I found out late that night the the package had been damaged in shipping, had been returned to Amazon, and they apologized and cancelled the order as it was the last one in stock.
Rather than dropping egg after egg for practice my intent had been to drop tennis balls (no cleanup needed). That way I could precisely position the height of the laser trigger, and program any needed delay. We still practiced with the tennis ball, but needed to do everything by sound and by eye. Because when it was time to have Michelle drop an actual egg, the cleanup between takes was a messy 20-minute process. Luckily the first take was the best, though I suspect with that laser trigger I could have captured the egg as it was breaking, rather than when the gooey mess was spreading across that glass. But the good news about shooting from below is that the yolk would have been largely invisible if photographed from above, but from below, it was the brilliantly colored feature!
Nikon Z7 body on a Manfrotto tripod with an Acratech ballhead, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens on a Nikon FTZ adaptor, two Nikon SB-5000 flash units, set to 1/128th power giving a flash duration of just 1/24,250th of a second, ISO 800, f/8 @ 1/200th of a second (flash sync speed, though only the ultra-brief flash duration really mattered).
Eggs again. It’s feeling like familiar territory by now, which means that the challenge of doing it differently keep increasing. In January of 2015, when Eggs was our theme I photographed an egg dropping onto a sheet of glass that was sitting on top of a black background. Captured mid-break thanks to TriggerTrap...
Then in October of 2015, when the theme was Squished, I placed an egg in a vise, and squeezed it just enough to crack the shell.
So of course I wanted to show yet another egg break, but from an entirely different perspective this time. My solution? Take out that sheet of glass, and place my Nikon Z7 directly below, photographing upward!
The image you are about to see required a very complicated setup that actually took some time to suss out. Setting up a tripod nearly flat on the ground. Aiming it up at the glass sheet suspended between two sawhorses. Once it was there it was impossible to review the images on the camera. So I used my CamRanger to control basics of the camera and send the images to my iPad where I could view them. Add in two light-stands holding two flash units, white reflector cards to bounce light up to the breaking egg, black cards to mask the area surrounding the egg so that the light didn’t bounce off the garage ceiling above, and more. Michelle assisted by climbing a step ladder and dropping the eggs onto the correct spot on the glass.
Also, I had the relocate this setup three different times, the first time because a ceiling fixture, that should have been far out of focus, was showing up in the frame. The second time because I keep seeing a dark circle surrounding the egg, before finally realizing it was a reflection of the lens, the only piece of equipment sticking up through the foam-core below. And finally after solving that problem by positioning the camera at a slight angle rather than pure vertical, the dang garage door opener was visible on the ceiling so I need to move everything yet again.
Finally, after having to get Byron’s help a couple of weeks ago when I needed ice cubes dropped for my Bucket List photo, I needed help again for this Eggs image. After having been disappointed in and returning the Miops triggering device I had ordered from B&H Photo, I had ordered a Cactus Laser Trigger from Amazon and expected it to arrive on Tuesday. But no delivery arrived. I found out late that night the the package had been damaged in shipping, had been returned to Amazon, and they apologized and cancelled the order as it was the last one in stock.
Rather than dropping egg after egg for practice my intent had been to drop tennis balls (no cleanup needed). That way I could precisely position the height of the laser trigger, and program any needed delay. We still practiced with the tennis ball, but needed to do everything by sound and by eye. Because when it was time to have Michelle drop an actual egg, the cleanup between takes was a messy 20-minute process. Luckily the first take was the best, though I suspect with that laser trigger I could have captured the egg as it was breaking, rather than when the gooey mess was spreading across that glass. But the good news about shooting from below is that the yolk would have been largely invisible if photographed from above, but from below, it was the brilliantly colored feature!
Nikon Z7 body on a Manfrotto tripod with an Acratech ballhead, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens on a Nikon FTZ adaptor, two Nikon SB-5000 flash units, set to 1/128th power giving a flash duration of just 1/24,250th of a second, ISO 800, f/8 @ 1/200th of a second (flash sync speed, though only the ultra-brief flash duration really mattered).