Gernade

[SpencerC]

here is a pic of a gernade i made with a homebuilt white box. (it is an emptied gernade)

exif:
shutter: 1/8
aperature: f4.5
ISO: 100
focal length: 33mm

using an 18-55mm on a tripod with a remote shutter. Canon xt

so my question is: does it look to dark? i was looking for an evil kinda death look.

[rpcrowe]

The grenade looks like it has been painted black. Although I have never used this type of grenade (it's WW-II and Korea issue). Every grenade of this type I have seen has been painted a flat olive drab.

[SpencerC]

in editing i increased the darkness of the gernade to give it a more dramatic look. the gernade itself was actually more of a grey than olive.

[jpitz31]

One of the biggest challenges of shooting still life images is making them retain their 3 dimensional shape. You are on the right track in using a soft box to light from above. It is also ok to have the object be dark for effect or mood. But you do not want to make an object too dark that causes it to loose it's shape.

Maintaining 3 dimensional shape is done by altering the object's lightness and darkness. This gives the object some shape.

Take some white cards, foam core or whatever you have lying around the house and place them just outside of the frame of the camera. These cards can be used to reflect the light from above and place some of that light on the object. This way your grenade can still have it dark sides but then maintain its shape by having some lighter sides. You also do not want to have the dark sides too dark or will will loose detail in the shadows.

If your camera has a histogram feature, use it to check the highlights and shadows in the image. A histogram is a chart that show shadows on the left side of the graph and highlights on the right side of the graph. You want to keep the image, on the histogram within the limits of the graph. If you have photoshop or photoshop elements you can also view the histogram of the image and use the levels control to make minor adjustments to the highlights, mid-tones and shadows. But if you let the exposure of the camera go too far overexposed or under exposed you will loose too much shadow or highlight detail.

Thanks

Joe

[SpencerC]

thanks. i will alter some of the editing of this pic. thanks for the tips.

[Obijuan]

To me it seems some post processing was done to increase the light and the saturation. I don't use light boxes. Try increasing the shutter time and decreasing the light source. Adjust until the amount of light needed. Bounce lights and experiment. Be different.