Hand Drill

[Brooks]

Originally Posted by Jim Milby

Nice shot and clever set up. I think the b/w emphasizes form and shape better. Was this a clamp light or shop light? Jim

Hi Jim,

I used a Lowell DP light. It has a quartz tungsten bulb at 500w. It's used primarily for location video or film. I use it for room interior still photography when all the ambient lighting is tungsten balanced.

[Brooks]

Originally Posted by Sketch

Beautiful light on this one Brooks. In my infinite wisdom I feel the need to hit everything with 3 or 4 lights. This shot has given me some inspiration. Plus that Plexi looks like a great diffuser.

What ƒ stop are you using on this and what is the distance between the drill and the background?

Thanks, Sketch.

Using milk plexi for a diffusion material is awkward because it's heavy. As you can see I have it resting on a crate and held in place by a light stand. Because the plexi had a perfect surface the specular highlights it creates are perfectly smooth with no reflection of any texture. The quality of the light in this shot is due to the large size of the plexi relative to the much smaller size of the subject.

You could easily use a second light for the background and get the same look. I too tend to over do it in terms of number of lights sometimes. It's good to limit yourself to one light occasionally.

The exposure for this shot was f/8 at 1/8 second with 100 ISO (continuous light) on an 85mm Nikon tilt/shift lens (no tilts or shifts).

I used f/8 because I wanted every bit of the drill to be sharp and I could easily control the sharpness of the background by choosing the distance from the subject to the bkgd. In this case, the drill was about 8 ft in front of the bkgd.

[Sketch]

Thanks for the info Brooks.

[Cross_]

I find the color version has a lot more impact with the red-blue contrast. You're also getting some more separation of the knob which is located just in front of a shadow from the cookie. While sepia seems more appropriate for an old-fashioned tool I think the color version is a lot more interesting to look at.

[Nu2this]

I actually have a drill very similar to this, just a slightly different handle. Used it a couple of times this past weekend while building a storage cabinet, quicker and easier than pulling out the electric drill. I'll have to get it out again and see if I can replicate this shot. Thanks for the inspiration.