Still Life Photography with FA 31mm f/1.8 Limited

Amazing what you can do with just a piece of black cloth. Nevertheless, I will like to share with how I took the shots, as in what camera setting was used, exposure, etc.

First of all, you gotta have an external flash gun, either the Pentax AF540 FGZ or any other Pentax compatible ones. I was using my trustworthy Metz 54 MZ4i with SCA 3720 M adaptor. I use a diffuser called ‘Demb’ which look like this:

The back flap is flexible enough to be used effectively on portrait or landscape mode, and can be flipped back for better control of bounced flash light. The front plastic pieces are shaped like inverted’ Sydney Opera House’ which effectively provides fill light without causing hotspots.

On to the settings on the camera, in my case the Pentax K10D, I chose ‘P’ mode and setting the aperture to f/8.0 for deeper Depth of Field (DOF). I used my FA 31mm f/1.8 Limited prime lens, and the working distance is just perfect. The Pentax K10D automatically selects the shutter to 1/50s, eliminating any possible camera shake. Shake Reduction is on, which provides double insurance against any shake.

For the black background, I tried setting the flash at EV0 but apparently found out that conservatively, the exposure will try NOT to underexpose the shot (although my Metz flash is running in Auto mode, no P-TTL). This create a problem. I can ’see’ the cloth a bit too clearly. The logical way is to underexpose the shot by about 2/3 stop, so I dialed in a Flash compensation of EV-2/3. Now ‘black’ is black. Perfect.

For white background, EV0 gives the same problem, so my advise is to dial in a flash compensation of EV+2! You will get a near perfect white, but watch out for any hotspots created on your subject.

I shot in RAW so that I have sufficient headroom for shadow/highlight editing and recovery. Loading the images into Adobe Lightroom, I checked the histogram accordingly, and the ‘Black’ slider comes into good use for low key/black background shots. To further enchance the darkness of the background I export the image to Adobe Photoshop, and use the Burn tool for Shadows to bring the R-G-B value to a perfect 0-0-0. For high key/white background shots, do the reverse, and use the Dodge tool on Highlight to bring the background to a perfect white.

Now that the background has been taken care of, I worked a little on the subject. To bring it to ‘life’, I added some ‘Vibrance’ in Adobe Lightroom to about 30. Vibrance works way better compare to Saturation as it only brings out the colours which are more subtle, without severely causing an oversaturation/fake looking image.

The final touch is a little contrast bump (+10 to +25 depending on images), and a minor shapening, again to taste, depending on intended output.

Hope this tip works for you too. Happy photographing.

[eminimall products="Pentax FA31 lens"]