I've seen a few people online do baby powder shots, and I wanted to give one a try.
I mounted the bottom brush in a vice, and placed a bit of talcum powder on it. I flicked the top brush with my right hand, and triggered the remote shutter with my left. Took about 100+ shots, and found the one I liked best.
I used a camera-mounted flash as the only lighting, and used a white card to direct the light toward the brush. I set the flash to a lower power (1/16, I think.) The lower power results in a shorter flash duration, which stops the motion better. Kept the room as dark as I could.
Stopped lens down to f/11 to get a reasonably wide DoF. Shutter speed was 1/250s, though the speed is really controlled by the flash, rather than the shutter.
Processing was fairly straightforward: Adjusted RAW levels, cropped, resized, unsharp mask.
That was a lot of fun to shoot. (Though there were vast quantities of powder coating the room afterwards :) ) I'm really pleased with how it turned out.
----
Wow! Thank you very much for the nice, helpful comments and for the great votes. I'm so happy to have my first ribbon! :)
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 105 Avg (all users): 7.3186 Avg (commenters): 8.0769 Avg (participants): 7.1034 Avg (non-participants): 7.5455 Views since voting: 3352 Views during voting: 208 Votes: 113 Comments: 25 Favorites: 1 (view)
Congratulations on winning with an excellent close up that meets the challenge
Not strictly a macro as required by the challenge but not everybody has the equipment to enable them to produce macros so I regard close ups as perfectly acceptable in the context of this challenge.
So, I get the pleasure of commenting on your entry again, and my original remarks and score of 8 still stand. I don't know where you got the idea from but it is a great one, well done. You have captured the moment really well with this minimum flash against the black background, the patterns of the wispy talc as it is dispersed are very attractive and appealing.
I didn't really pick up on the stray bristles of the grey brush as others here did but I can see their point especially as the lower brown brush is so much better in this respect. The composition is very effective with an appropriate amount of brush bezel at the top and bottom of the frame, the crop is good not too tight.
What a great way to introduce yourself to DPC, an excellent result for an excellent submission, apologies for the delayed critique, as they say, 'better late than never', or at least I hope it is, Sid
As a "macro" this did not seem, to me, as a qualifying submission for this contest. As a most intriguing - I mean really intriguing image - I stand in awe. Unique, imaginative, a perfectly captured moment - spellbinding.
Talc in Motion
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
