Thanks to Lisa for suggesting this week's theme ... something sweet, or sweet-and-sour. Now is the perfect time of year for this because you can't walk more than three or four steps without running across a plate of temptation.




Have fun taking your photos, and when you're done .... eat the evidence.

Bill

The fine print:
Everyone is invited to participate.
Because the purpose of the weekly theme is to get us more familiar with our cameras and to sharpen our photographic skills, entries should be taken during the week of the theme.
Photoshopping is allowed.
Be creative and have fun!

Here's the candy from my coffee table.

Here is one. a before and after

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bun-after.jpg (174.47 KiB) Viewed 1043 times

and another

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Hi people,
All the tempting examples of sweet stuff that have been posted so far would be not so interesting without:



I wanted to go inside a beehive, but they've got Homeland Security like you wouldn't believe so I gave up. (I never really wanted to visit Guantanamo )

Steve

Steve - I hope you'll tell us a bit about your shot. It's great ... how'd you do it??

Bill

Hi Bill,
I'm glad you liked the photo. I dug deep in my closet yesterday and found my Honeywell Pentax Auto-bellows, from about 1970. I don't remember when Pentax stopped being "Honeywell", but it's been a long time.
The bellows allows true macrophotography, i.e. the object being photographed is larger on the film than in real life. It works the same way when your film is digital.

The shot above is a 100% crop, no enlargement at all. The camera (Pentax K10d) is mounted on one end of the bellows and the lens (a Super Takumar 50mm f2) is on the other. The bellows moves the lens farther from the film/sensor plane causing the extreme magnification. I mounted the whole contraption on my tripod, pointed down at a saucer with a pinch of table sugar on it and that's about it. I used a 60-watt equivalent compact fluorescent bulb, in a gooseneck lamp and that provided plenty of light.

Exposure was 1 second with the lens at f11, and about 9 inches from the film plane. I determined exposure by making a few test shots until I liked what I saw.

In PSE 6, all I did was crop, sharpen a bit with a high-pass filter (depth of field when using a bellows is pretty much nonexistent), and do a "save for web".

This stuff is all a thousand times easier than it was back in wet darkroom days I didn't need to do any calculations, think about reciprocity failure, or any of that. I just banged away until I got something I liked.

Have fun,
Steve

Dang... I'm impressed!! I thought it was rock candy.

Well my image isn't nearly as amazing as Steve's - but it is sweet.

3 year old Bekah having a cup of cocoa

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Little chocolate ... CARS!!! How cool is that?



Bill