Oh wow, I'm so thrilled with this result :-) Thank you all!
I really didn't think it would make so good, in fact I was really pessimistic when doing it. I had no good results after 130 tries, my fingers were hurting, and I was sleepy... decided to shoot some more just before going to bed, and this one appeared on the LCD screen!
________________________
Today I decided to smash some pencils against the table ;-)
I used the bulb mode, manually triggered using a remote, while the flash was sound activated.
This shot was the best one I was able to get before I ran out of pencils!
[Mar. 25th, 2010 09:12:19 AM]
I know this is quite orange, and I got several comments about the current "orange" challenge.
In fact this is just a coincidence: I broke many pencils, and the best shot happened to be with the orange one!
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 135 Avg (all users): 7.4083 Avg (commenters): 8.5517 Avg (participants): 7.4918 Avg (non-participants): 7.3799 Views since voting: 10138 Views during voting: 560 Votes: 240 Comments: 67 Favorites: 44 (view)
The shutter speed was not important, all I wanted was it to be open when the flash blinked. So it was in bulb mode, and I kept it open about 5 seconds, while knocking the pen on the table.
Each time I break a pencil point I'll keep this image in mind as from now on. Never realised that such a "simple" thing like breaking a point, could produce such a great image.
Congrats on the ribbon.
Excellent shot. Deserving Blue and Im curious to know your setup here? Could you please give us some information on this? Especially the lighting and background.
Sure thing. The flash was obviously on the upper left (1/32th), pointing at the pencil. The room was dark. I had a standard white piece of paper on the table. The macro lens was parallel to the table: in fact there is no specific background, the transition from white to black is simply due to the absence of ambient light in the room.
This is a fantastic shot. I love the impression of depth that's created by the flying shards of pencil - some in focus, and some in front of and behind the plane of focus.
And the composition and bold colour is great too.
Excellent shot. Deserving Blue and Im curious to know your setup here? Could you please give us some information on this? Especially the lighting and background.
Was wondering what the bulb effect did compared to using a shutter speed of 1/4000 for example?
I am not sure about that, but I suppose it could work. My problem here was not the shutter speed, but the synchronization of the pencil's impact with the exposure: for this shot, the flash was triggered 9ms after the sound (the microphone being really close), so there is no way I would have done it by triggering the camera itself (takes about 100-150ms on the 5D).
Oh wow, I'm so thrilled with this result :-) Thank you all!
I really didn't think it would make so good, in fact I was really pessimistic when doing it. I had no good results after 130 tries, my fingers were hurting, and I was sleepy... decided to shoot some more just before going to bed, and this one appeared on the LCD screen!
Amazing idea and execution! You got a great eye to be capable to see art in such a simple subject! The colors and background are amazing too. I really hope you do great!
What a shot! The texture on the pencil is what draws me first, but then you've got pencil-destruction bokeh! And the orange line on the border is (to me) the cherry on top.
WOW!.. Great shot. just an amazing shot. Probably would finish pretty high in the Orange challenge also. My first 10 for this challenge. Excellent work
Let it rain
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
