em3 wrote:
Nice build...nice pics. Would like to know more about your studio setup..most of all, how do you set the camera up so that the back side of your handlebar hooks line up (and are hidden) by the hooks in the foreground? Is this a photoshop effect or are you using a telephoto lens, with a direct focus on bars rathe then center of bike? If you could share focal length and distance from subject that would be great.
You got it. A telephoto compresses depth, and allows you to line up the rear (left) drop with the front (right) drop when shooting from the side.
The shorter the focal length you use, the more the wide-angle perspective create an apparent difference in size between foreground and background objects. A longer focal length telephoto avoids this.
I used a 70-200 sitting about 30 feet away from the bike. The bike itself was another 10 feet away from the back of the seamless. The effective 35mm focal length was around 110mm. Note that you can also cheat a bit by turning the handlebars ever so slightly.
Focus isn't critical. With the lights set to around f/11, there was enough depth of field for at least the width of the entire bike.
What you don't see in the photos is the primary light source—a Speedo 202VF head into a Chimera medium (36x48") softbox. It was strip masked to about 24x48". Two other heads firing into shoot-through umbrellas were used as kickers to bring out detail in the rim profile. I can't remember the lighting ratios.
For the detail shots, I used just the softbox, but this time with a grid, and placed much closer to the detail areas. White and black flags were used to control reflections and specular highlights.
EM3, I love your R5 man. I think all of the limited-run colours (like your green stripe) look so much better than the very pedestrian gray.
Cervelo R5 VWD Argyle
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