Shoes Shot

Trying to model a print commercial seen in the papers few months ago.

Taken after at 8pm in the void at my home, 23 Jan 2012.
Setup
- D200 with AF-S MICRO NIKKOR 105mm 1:2.8G ED
- SB600 + SB800, on CLS
- Nikon Capture NX 2

Not really a successful take with the boots, but surprisingly good with the more colourful shoes.
Applied about 10% sharpening at 10pt radius.

First few takes

Tried different feathering of the lights

Still not satisfied. Cannot get the contrast. This method don't work well with dark-coloured shoes.

My beige is surprisingly good

Same goes for this sport shoes.

Setup for the shot. Shot at ISO400 and 1/60s to black out the white walls. Self-made gobo attached to the flash heads to prevent spills onto the white wall too.

Shots after a shower

Taken after a shower starting around the evening, 22 Jan 2012.

Setup

- D200 with AF-S MICRO NIKKOR 105mm 1:2.8G ED

- SB600 off-camera with SC-29

- My LED torch bought in Germany
- Nikon Capture NX 2

Pictures are un-cropped, except for the grasshopper deemed to be too centred for the subject. No other corrections are applied

Droplets on the underside of a leave. Need to wrap the flash head to control light spill

Taken with the torch overhead. Had to point inwards to prevent light spill to the background.

An accidental found!

There were quite a number of tries for the grasshopper. One difficulty was that the subject was too high; I had to extend my tripod collar to its highest, slightly over 1.8m. Also, I didn't want to disturb the subject too much, so had to make do with what was available.

The final shot chosen was with the SB600 slightly overhead to the right of the subject. The below shows the other attempts. Regretfully, not much of the eyes are captured.

Part of the leg is not visible

Too much spectacular highlights. This was lit slightly below and right of the subject. Note the black background on the right of the frame