Ranan Samanya Photography
fashion runways, portraits & personal branding, environment, and documentary photography
Poor man’s food photography studio – Chocolate candy
OK, it’s not a studio. It’s my living room. An unused bedside table. A few sheets of used paper, and mmm… toilet paper! Poured down two packs of chocolate candy. Zoomed in to maximum and wide open so the paper borders were so out of focus, and the flash added the uniform white although it was not (I didn’t even have to move the unused candies off the table). Speedlite 430EZ flash was in manual mode, stopped down 2/3 stops, bounced off the ceiling. Oh, and manual focus.
My original plan was to use the texture of the toilet paper (and if you ask why not using kitchen paper, the answer is simple: no stock!). Alas it didn’t work. Was the flash too bright? Was the texture too small to be captured? Should I change my aperture? Hmmm….
Here’s the setup. All objects were in the exact position as in the final picture (well I might have eaten a few of the candies).
Sprinkles of light
I love decorative lights. They provide colours to otherwise black and empty backgrounds in night photos. Like here with these Balinese gamelan ready for a stage performance. The lights were hanging in front of a restaurant approximately 20m away. My movement area was tight as I took the pictures from in between the decoration for the stage.
A 60 degree tilted external flash in M mode was used. Yes, manual mode, as this is the only mode my old speedlite can work with the 7D. The soft flash highlighted the carvings while not making them too bright such that the gold colour remained.
The Shoppes – Marina Bay Sands
It was almost midnight. The shops in the mall of Marina Bay Sands Singapore were all closed, but the main lights were still on. It was easy to set up a tripod and compose. I sort of like the curvature.
I enhanced the original tint of rose on the wall, and edited the Lion King neon box to get the original colour back. BTW, Lion King Musical will open this March.
Original unedited image.
Twilight 200m above Singapore – the 180 degree view
Sixteen frames. Two minutes time in total. Covering from PSA Singapore Terminals on the south west to Ritz-Carlton Millenia on the north-east. This is approximately 180 degree panorama from SkyPark – the observation deck on top of Marina Bay Sands. The frames were taken approximately 20 minutes before the other panorama pictures in my previous post.
I still used my EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens @45mm (didn’t dare to change under the strong wind and raindrops every now and then). With ISO 800 and f/6.3, the exposure varied from 1/25sec on the north-western sky to 1/8sec north-east. All handheld.
Thanks to Hugin, the stitching went very well with just the default values. It was, however heavy on my pc as I only have 1MB RAM to work with. I left the upper part as it is since cropping will cut the top of three buildings.
As usual, you need to click on the image to see how not sharp it is. Still wondering why though, maybe I focused on the wrong objects; I remember changing my focusing point on the few last frames at the right, and the results were definitely sharper than the far left ones. But this could also be because the objects on the right are closer to the camera. Anyway… hope you enjoy it a little bit.
Twilight 200m above Singapore
It was windy. And cloudy. And rainy. I waited almost 2 hours on top of Marina Bay Sands -200m high- that day, hoping to get a nice sunset. Sunset came and went by almost unnoticed. But the twilight lingered for some time.
This picture is a result of stitching five vertical frames. I could have done it with one horizontal frame at 24mm, but then I would have missed the fun and details (not that there is much detail here). All individual frames were taken with my EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens @ 45mm, f/5.6, ISO 800. All were handheld for 1 second (even monopod is not allowed here, and the plentiful of security personnel were very sharp in spotting pods).
I gave a second thought, then decided to take yet another series of frames, six horizontal ones this time, and stitched them together. I didn’t pay attention to the horizon, and lost much of the reflection on the water at the bottom of the stitched image due to cutting. All individual frames were taken again with my EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens @ 24mm, f/6.3, ISO 400. All were also handheld for 1 second.
Click on the images for better resolution; you just have to. Only then will you notice that (especially for the first image) it is not that sharp. Ouch!
a Thousand Hands
A modern dance with traditional smell. A squad of fire-fighters turned dancers. And a little luck with lighting. That’s what this is all about.
My old 430EZ speedlite flash is not 100% compatible with my 7D. It still correspond automatically with the change in my 24-105mm lens, but will only fire full power. Lucky again, we are in digital era. I was lazy last night to do manual calculation using distance, guide number and all, so I fired up a few test shots before the event here in Bintan Resorts, and adjusted my settings manually.
I didn’t swivel my flash head when shooting vertical. There was no ceiling to use as bouncer, and I don’t have any portable bouncer; I relied mainly on the reflection from the spectators as it was tilted 60 degrees up. The use of ISO 640 was necessary to compensate for the I-don’t-know-how-many stops lost, to get enough light with 1/15 seconds exposure; while retaining the shimmering red satin and dark golden skin colour of the dancers, the Chinese New Year theme.
I also zoomed in that much and have to let go a few hands so I can get rid most of the distracting background (see the second picture).
Geometric aisle – Turi Beach Resort
If you like geometric objects, chances are you will like Turi Beach Resort. Dark clouds were hanging over Batam when I arrived there last week, but the moment I saw the main aisle structure I knew it will be a good object of desire.
This frame is not the sharpest from my set, but I just like the lighting and the shadow. It was taken with rain and wind blowing from side. The 10 seconds exposure made the aisle much brighter, otherwise it was pretty dark.
Too bad my stay was accompanied by a complete wet weather. I will return there in the near future to take more geometric frames.
Ranan Samanya Photography 
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