Lava Lamp

[purplepixie]

Ok, so I'm a hippy and I got a lava lamp for my birthday - finding it facinating and had to take photos
These are very grainy, but I'm not too dissapointed - any comments?

[xhan]

ah you cought get some very interesting photographs with that!!

[wulf]

Turn down the ISO setting! I'm guessing it was ramped up for the low light setting but I think silky smoothness would look better and a wider aperture and slower shutter speed would be the route for that.

Keep experimenting though... it is tempting me to drag my own out.

Wulf

[ELAY]

What a great subject.

The second one in particular is arresting, with the neutral background and the lovely red/purple glow around the lamp.

Definitely grainy -- didn't find the EXIF, but I wondered if you can you get your ISO down like Wulf suggests without boosting your shutter too much? I guess that if you go to high on the shutter you will get some blur from that stuff in the lamp mushrooming around, and longer exposures can also add noise themselves.

EL

[purplepixie]

Tx for the input and comments everyone
Exif: 1/8 sec at f/5, 1600ISO, 18mm
I did crank up the ISO for the light, but maybe I should try setting up the tripod (sigh) and getting longer exposures - will try and post the results.

wulf - aah another closet hippy would like to see your pics if you do play

[Murtasma]

I wonder what it would be like to set the iso down to 100 and shoot at like F22. That way you could get a nice long shutter creating perhaps a long blob. A lava lamp would def be fun to do some long exposer stuff with.

[wulf]

Either a tripod or, since the lava lamp is pretty static, any kind of reasonably stable level surface. For example a pile of books would do it. You could then drop the ISO and the shutter speed. Going from ISO 1600 to ISO 200 is 3 steps (1600 -> 800, 800 -> 400, 400 -> 200) for pictures as smooth as possible. Therefore, you need to go three steps slower on the shutter speed to compensate, taking you to 1s (see reference site for standard steps, in case your camera allows intermediary ones).

Or, since you will have plenty of time, just experiment.

Wulf

ps. I think I'm more of an "out" hippy than a closet one!

[purplepixie]

Tx for the advise wulf and murtasma - definitely going to try it out.
Wulf - good to hear you're embracing hippydom peace