Pictures of the Week September 1, 2002
This pictures of the week is about what I learned about photography this week. This week a friend gave me some ideas about how to improve my digital photography and naturally I had to test this theory and see what I found out. Thanks Jim, the experiment proved as always, you were right.
I set up a tripod so I could take the same picture several times and vary the flash to see what result I got. This was all driven by the hypothesis that the quench circuitry in the camera flash could not turn off the flash quick enough to make the picture come out right. To help this problem I covered the flash with one or two layers of handkerchief to reduce the amount of light getting to the subject and therefore give the camera more time to react to the amount of light it sees exposing the picture. You can click on the photos and see the full sized images to judge for yourself. The pictures were taken with an HP PhotoSmart 200 1Megapixal camera. Tests 3 and 4 are obviously poor quality. This leaves Test 1 and 2 to compare. Notice the oil pan fins visible in Test 2 that are a black mass in Test 1. Also, the weld detail of Test 1 is washed out and shows much more clearly in Test 2. Notice also how the background is underexposed in Test 1 and slightly overexposed in Test 2. With the objective of showing the quality of the intercooler assembly, Test 2 is the winner.
Test 1: This photo taken with flash set to auto
Test 2: This photo taken with 1 layer of hankie over the flash
Test 3: This photo taken with 2 layers of hankie over the flash
Test 4: This photo taken with no flash