Tuesday, February 3, 2009

MACRO PP2 : How I control Background

I know this is not easy as what I experience but i am sharing some easy way to achieve background (either black or color) ...

based on some voting from my flickr contact from sample Green or Black
there people like black background and also some prefer natural green ... make it short there are few type of background which we can achieve easily

1. black background
this is most easy to achieve while flash use... make sure angle of shooting the object background (40mm apart) do not have anything, then use flash, low ISO, big F number/small aperture (e.g. F11, F16) then the background will be black :D as below

7.5 Damselfly ... black BG ... (black or green)

2. natural color background
i. do not use flash and choose flat/clean background
- but this going to need good lighting, tripod or both to get really sharp/focus picture

e.g.
Natural Lighting


ii. fake or human make BG (which I normally do)
- hand hold or make a BG with leaf (dry or fresh) just 20-30mm alway from the object (depend on magnification)
- move your object to nearby BG (20-40mm alway depend magnification) ... choose whatever BG you wish to have :D

e.g
14.1 Plant Bug ... ~3.5:1

iii. the setting to get the BG color
normally while we have below setting or combine, the BG color will be bring out. but be careful of selecting the BG as if non clean BG choose may cause distractive BG instead a good BG

- high ISO normally 400-800 will give you good result
- lower F number/big aperture (f2.8-7.1) but this will create DOF concern (DOF will become swallow)
- lower Shutter speed 1/8-1/30
- this is very much depend on BG adjacent distance too... if it is really far (>300mm) ... use other method

e.g (same object no fake BG make, flash use)

# Exposure Time (1 / Shutter Speed) = 1/40 second = 0.025 second
# Lens F-Number/F-Stop = 71/10 = F7.1
# Exposure Program = manual control (1)
# ISO Speed Ratings = 400

7.5 Damselfly ... green BG ...(black or green)

########################

# Exposure Time (1 / Shutter Speed) = 1/200 second = 0.005 second
# Lens F-Number/F-Stop = 11/1 = F11
# Exposure Program = manual control (1)
# ISO Speed Ratings = 100

7.5 Damselfly ... black BG ... (black or green)



enjoy ..................

4 comments:

Yiau CW said...

Good info! I'm starting to like macro photography :)

The Wonder

liewwk said...

thanks Yiau

Denis Gordo said...

This is nice, but what about that photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/liewwk/3238366397/meta/in/photostream - small aperture F13, short Shutter Speed 1/200.

liewwk said...

Denis, it was due to the BG is close

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