creating transparent poolballs

[jbristow8]

This is a 30 sec exposure in low light 100asa 18ap. manually places several balls into the frame during exposure. Interesting point is my hand does not show up while positioning the balls.

From Still Art

After reading 'How I shoot the Moon" in this forum(Thanks Arlon!) I figured out how to make the color version of these shots look good. I reduced the exposure by 3 stops on camera and then reduced color temp in editing.

From Still Art

I am interested in anyone's ideas on other photo objects(bowls, flowers) that would work well with this technique. My wife want me to try it with people to create ghosts beside real people, but that seems much harder due to movement.

[suzib]

Could you give a bit more detail on how you did this, please

[karlelvis]

Brilliant. I"d like more 'how to' on this also!

[jbristow8]

I set my Canon D7 slr to aperture of 18 using mode(Av) and manually set to asa100, no flash. I had moderately low lighting from right side coming from ceiling fan light. This forced the exposure to a 30 sec shutter speed. I started with 2 balls in the frame(1&14), released the shutter, and placed each new ball into the frame by hand starting from the farthest "transparent" ball first at 4-5 second intervals(almost as fast as I could move them). Due to low light the camera was capturing each pixel at a very slow rate, which is why my hand and the movement of balls into the frame do not appear as visible.(note) close examination shows a few random pixels from hand movement, but those are minimal. I have both color and B&W, and find the B&W has greater contrast so the shadows and background looking thru the transparent balls really pops.

[suzib]

Thank you so much for the explanation

[k3vin]

Great shot, love the shine from the later balls.

[longren]

Great shot, but what to make the front ball transparent?

[jbristow8]

In response to what makes the front balls "transparent" . Think of this as a double exposure print on 35 mm film in the darkroom: we would do this with double exposure to the print paper using 2 different photos(I am going back to my old school days here). the digital camera has opened a brand new way of doing overlay printing. The key element with this is a 30 second exposure with low light causes the camera to pick up pixels at a slow rate. The first 10-20 seconds is used to pick up image pixels of the background table and ball#1&#14. when ball 4,6,7,9 are placed in front of balls 1&14, the camera can no longer see the background balls(1&14), and starts capturing pixels for the front most 3 balls(4,7&9). that 10 second "exposure" captures only enough pixels to give the transparent image.

[Shutterbugdeb]

Very cool...and so creative!

[mmmmhhhhmmmm]

Originally Posted by jbristow8

I set my Canon D7 slr to aperture of 18 using mode(Av) and manually set to asa100, no flash. I had moderately low lighting from right side coming from ceiling fan light. This forced the exposure to a 30 sec shutter speed. I started with 2 balls in the frame(1&14), released the shutter, and placed each new ball into the frame by hand starting from the farthest "transparent" ball first at 4-5 second intervals(almost as fast as I could move them). Due to low light the camera was capturing each pixel at a very slow rate, which is why my hand and the movement of balls into the frame do not appear as visible.(note) close examination shows a few random pixels from hand movement, but those are minimal. I have both color and B&W, and find the B&W has greater contrast so the shadows and background looking thru the transparent balls really pops.

Very nice shot! Thanks for sharing!