15/52 - Hard Disk

Hard Disk

One of my friends at work had a whole bunch of old hard disks on his desk so I thought I'd use one for this weeks photograph. The disk was from a laptop and therefore fairly small in size. I used the 50mm f\1.8 lens to shoot this as I was initially going for a very shallow depth of field. As it turned out, I changed my mind and shot at f\8 but still used the same lens.

Lighting info after the jump.

Lighting setup - Hard Disk

This again was a 2 light setup but instead of using a snoot I opted for a home made grid spots. Grid spots are very similar to snoots but it is used to light only a very small area of the subject. See image below for an idea of how you can control light using a grid spot.

I used the Canon 580 EX II fired from camera left, at 1/32 through a CTB gel and bounced the light onto the hard disk using a white foam-core board placed on the right of camera. I changed the white balance to tungsten to enhance the blur light.

I fired a Canon 430 EX II from high camera right, through a grid spot and CTO gel at 1/2 power, aimed at the top corner of the hard disk. I used the CTO gel to compensate for the tungsten white balance setting on the camera.

The effect of the grid spot can be seen in the image below.

Area lit by Grid spot

If I had used a snoot for this shot, the entire hard disk would have been lit up by the 430 EX II and I would have been unable to get the blue "feel" which I was after.