Fuji F11 Article

Are you competing with the usual landscapes, birds, flowers, and bugs? Then try something different! Get yourself a spray bottle of water, a twig, and a window screen and start creating unusual images.

With a little imagination and a few dreary and milky or color prints, you can fabricate new and exciting images that will add some fun to your photography and help you to win your club competitions.

have a focusing rail, use it. It will finger your images easier to focus upon. (See "Setup.")

The key accessories are a piece of fine window screen, a spray bottle and plain water. The screen, about 6x6 inches in dimensions, is mounted on a piece of mat board in which a 5x5 piece is cut out, so that a window is formed over which the screen is mounted by stapling or taping.

The purpose of the spray bottle is to fine mist the screen, in order to get random droplets which tarry on the screen and act as manifold micro lenses, if the air is unduly dry, the droplets may not last long. In order to increase the surface tension of the droplets I occasionally add about 8-10 drops of common household glycerin obtained in a pharmacy or in a grocery store.

The previously taken photograph, from 8x10 to 16x20, black and silver or color, is placed almost 18 inches behind the window screen. Place your photograph upside down, so that the image in the droplet will be real side up. This will make it easier for you to focus and invent your picture. Floodlights are directed toward your photographs at a 45 gradation angle to decrease reflections.

thoroughly accommodate your camera's focus on the micro images in the water droplets, not on the screening. Set your camera on outlet seniority, at f11 to f22, to increase the abyss of field. Use your camera's stop down preview button to see the finished image and the very narrow measurement of focus in your viewfinder. Your exposures will usually run from 15 to 45 seconds or more, depending on the magnitude of your floodlights.

Bracket your exposures +2-4X to compensate for reciprocity failure when using film. I usually double the meter translation for the first confession accordingly increase the exposures by one and a half to two times for subsequent exposures. If your camera has no stipulation for increasing exposures, this is still attainable, if you decrease your camera's ISO surroundings from 100 to 50, 25, 12 or 10.

It is very important to use your cable release, mirror lock-up, or self-timer in order to reduce camera action because most of your exposures will be from 30 to 120 seconds. Color shift is not a dilemma as you are looking for a descriptive elevated impact effect or are using a digital camera.

One further technique, with the droplet water lens, is to get a light offshoot from a awkward Rose or Barberry Bush. I generally escalate this twig on a piece of modeling clay pushed into the top of a bottle. This enables you to move the twig for convenient thesis.

Gently place a drop or two of water on the thorn or berry. For this strategy I use a light antitoxin dropper. The camera is gently moved close to adjust the drop and the refracted image behind. afresh, focus only on the effigy in the droplet--this is most influential--then stop down your lens. Use your camera's stop down preview button to see the final reflection. Be guarded not to touch the droplet once it is in focus, as it is very delicately attached and can be dislodged easily. (See "Thornberry.") I also increase the exposures to satisfy for reciprocity fiasco. Make sure you satisfy for the tungsten nimble by using indoor film or use an 8OA filter, as I do, when using Fuji chrome 100 outdoor slide film.

When downloading digital images, first regulate the levels and then add some unsharp masking. You may have to adjust the color balance in Photoshop[R], due to the tungsten information.

At times the perception may embody to be cropped to remove extraneous water droplets. Once your image looks good, deliver as a difference file?.

I get tried this technique with strobes, but the results were weak. It apparently would work better if I had very high powered strobes, so that I could stop my lens down to f11 or f22 and could also facile up the twig holding the drop. This technique would employment with images projected on a screen, too.

All your photos with the wet screen will not be perfect. There may be noticeable distortion in the droplets. If so, shake off the screening and start over also. With this information, you should obtain many exemplary and uncommon photographs that will stun your viewers and intrigue the judges.

Any mention of products or service,; in this article or anyplace else in the PSA memoir does not tonsil[Fie an endorsement or approval of those items.

Dr. Kenneth A. Deitcher, FPSA Albany, NY