120 Setting up a Home StudioFIGURE 7.1 Studio fl ash. For the
more serious studio, professional lighting
is a must. Here we see a fl ash fi tted with a
snoot, a ring fl ash (great for portraits), and a
simple fl ash unit without attachments. © Will
Game/Dreamstime
stocks, and it was taken using objects lying around, using natural light
from my kitchen window. My camera (for this shot I used an Olympus
E-510 Four Thirds system) is fi tted with a Zuiko F.2 50-mm macro lens
(100-mm equivalent on a 35-mm or “full-frame” camera—a medium
telephoto length that is also great for portraits), although a decent
zoom with a macro function would have been nearly as good. It was
taken, set up to image-ready, in the time it took you to have that well-
earned cup of liquid refreshment.
Figure 7.3 shows the setup. Note that I am using the useful “live
view” function on the Olympus E-510 to compose the image on the
rear screen. If you have a “bridge” camera, you can do the same, but
most current dSLR cameras do not offer live view. (I’m sure more will
in the future.) It would be nearly as good, however, to take a sample
shot and preview it on the rear screen.
For the fi nal shot, I also used a piece of white card to the right of
the camera and bowl to help fi ll in the shadows (you can’t see the
card in the shot). Exposure had to be controlled quite carefully to avoid
blown-out highlights on the fruit. (Remember, expose to the right, but
avoid going too far and overexposing the highlights.) Your camera may
well have a warning function to show where highlights are blown