Photo Project 52. Week 16 – Invasion

Back to the real world with me.  I wasn’t sure what to shoot this week, plus it has been a very busy week since we just got back from our wedding and honeymoon.  On Friday I decided to build a do-it-yourself lightbox, or macro studio.  I had the box and plastic bags to use as a diffuser, but I needed some high power lights to light up the box.  I picked up a couple 500 watt halogen work lights for around $20 from Walmart.  I was worried at first that 1000 total watts of lighting power would be way too much, but it wasn’t a problem at all and it worked out for the better.  After a half hour of construction I tested out my rig and it worked great!  I was psyched!  Getting the camera set up properly required full manual mode shooting.  So, that would make this photo my first 100% manual shot!  For past shots I would typically shoot in one of the priority modes, like Shutter priority or Aperture priority, or Sports mode, etc… but for this set up, using any of the single priority modes didn’t work out.  The camera would try and over-compensate for the high amount of light I had coming in and the pictures wouldn’t come out right… so I put on my big boy pants and went for full manual mode.  I set the aperture as low as it would go, iso at 100, and then played around with the shutter speed.  I also learned that with the flash on in manual mode, your fastest shutter speed was 1/200th.  I’m not sure the reasoning on this and I’d imagine I could have over-ridden it some how, but after previewing the flash shots, I didn’t like them anyway and abandoned the use of the flash.  The shot I ended up going with was a 1/60th second exposure, f4 aperture (lens was slightly zoomed, and it was the kit lens, so I had to go with f4 even though I wouldn’t have minded going lower), and iso 100.  It came out quite beautifully, and I get to showcase another of my hobbies.  Android collectibles from the amazing Andrew Bell.  Yes, I am a nerd… but you’re here reading this article, so I’m sure you already knew that.  I think I’ve gone on long enough for now…  Here it is:

“Invasion”