Canon 5D Mk IV – Ef 100mm f/2.8 Macro – Einstein 640W (x2) – 1/200, f/4, ISO 100, Eval Meter

Today I changed lenses to the 50mm and walked outside and…stood there. I then took stupid shots of nothing. And these shots were stupid: a dried up bug, a picture of the sky cuz I missed the airplane, a blurry car going down the road, dirt…you get the idea. And then I thought “I have to get out of these Dog Days of PotD!”

I thought what kinds of photography do I like? Well grandkid action pics, macro, B&W, silhouettes, and product-type shots all come to mind. In the kitchen, we have a wine cork holder loaded with corks. So I grabbed a handful of corks and went into the studio. I did a similar pic 12 years ago which you can see below. While I was proud of that photo, and it has a lot of charm, I hope I’ve become a better photographer. What’s interesting about the two photos is that they were both taken with the same lens – the 100mm Macro. However, the old pic was a single shot with a flash and the ISO was maxed out at f/32. I suppose I did that because either stacking was not common back then, or I did not have the tools. Either way, the f/32 setting tells me I wanted to get as much depth of field in that shot as possible. In addition, the color temperature is way off in the old pic.

About the PotD: It is a stacked photo of 16 images. I set up an Einstein 640W strobe with barn doors to the right and slightly in front of the corks. I wanted to create shadows on the left. The first image I took showed complete black on the lower far left cork. I then set up another Einstein to the left and slightly in front. This strobe had a 10 degree grid attached and I pointed it at that area of black – I wanted to provide a little light to balance out the shadows. I had the camera and lens set on my macro rail which was on the tripod and tethered to the computer. I also had the remote attached. I put the Raw images into Lightroom and did some minor post-processing. I exported them as jpg files and then put them into the Zerene Stacker program I am evaluating. After that program did its magic, I put back into Lightroom and exported as a more efficient image for this website.