Glowing Toaster – Project 365: Day 132

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I had a bit of fun with this shot today.  I wanted to capture the glowing coils of a toaster.  Here is how I did it.

First I got a toaster.  Yes, you will need a toaster for this shot.  I set the toaster up on a piece of white poster board.  I propped the back of the toaster up a bit and angled it so that I would have a better view of the glowing coils.

I used a tripod for this shot as I knew it was going to need a long shutter speed (30 sec.).  I adjusted my aperture to f/6.3 and set my shutter speed to 30 sec.  How did I come to those settings?  Trial and error.  With my flash in a Lumiquest Softbox III and set at 1/8th power, I fired off a few 30 second test shots and manually triggered the flash multiple times.  I adjusted the aperture until I got what I liked.  In this case I wanted the top front of the toaster to be in focus and the glowing coils to be a bit out of focus.

I manually focused the camera, turned off the lights and with my camera set to f/6.3, my shutter speed at 30 seconds and my flash unit at 1/8th power; I triggered the shot with a wireless remote to avoid any camera shake.  As the exposure was being taken I manually triggered the flash 4 times.  First I fired it camera left, then camera right, then above and behind and finally above and aimed behind the toaster.

Firing the flash multiple times gave me a nice exposure on the exterior of the toaster and the long 30 second shutter speed gave me a nice glowing interior.

I’m always looking for interesting perspective shots so post your ideas and I just may use it for Project 365.