hot chilli - first picture post

Well my first post with picture, as i couldnt find any bugs i thought i would try this dried chilli i had. what do you guys think? All critic welcome.

Dont do this at home children, well dont touch your eyes after handling chilli

Both were shot in M mode with settings of:

ISO: 800
Aperture: f16
Exposure: 1/100

I used an old Metz flash unit with a home made cardboard curved extension to get the light on the object so close to the lens.

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very nice...like the second one the best...

The plain background makes the second the winner. Nice DOF due to the small aperture but shame this resulted in ISO 800 being needed as the image is just a little noisier for this.

one more from this series
settings are

ISO 400, f16, 1/125
all of these taken with the Canon EF-S18-55mm

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#2 is best exposure but I think the lighting is uninspiring. Play around with combinations of lights and see if you can inject a bit of... drama....what do I know?

Thanks for the coments guys. I must admit i like the light grey background on the top left of picture 1.
I agree with the lighting, if you could see my setup then you would understand that. My flash unit is 15-20 years old, had it on an AE-1. I quickly made a cardboard tunnel for the flash so i could get a bit of light in front of the lens. That is also the reason for the high ISO I think. Got a flash bracket on order with a Canon Off Shoe cable. I want to try some pics in natural light this weekend, might be better.

Superb magnification!

Looks like you are having fun with the extension tubes. Good shots.
Keep on posting.
Brian V.