Chris,

Re... "This shot was taken under available artificial room light rather than studio lighting and there is no computeryjiggery apart from the fake smoke effect." and "than in the days of film, because it would be near on impossible to colour correct under today's low energy domestic lighting"

Can I therefore presume that the only effect here (smoke asides) was a colour correction? I presume your working to an aperture near the F22 end and a slow exp on a tripod. However, the shadows are very soft... so what sort of articial light were you using?

Very interested to gain some tips... I think that a number of us could benefit given the rapidly reducing availability of daylight.

Thanks ... Jon

Yup, just f16 and a whole 15 second exposure on a tripod with the camera set at 100 iso. I shoot in RAW which allows far better white balance control when converting the files to something useful. Sadly many small non-DSLR cameras don't have a RAW option, though many will do a very good job automatically setting the white balance just shooting JPEG and in this respect my little Canon is better than my Nikon (but shooting RAW gets around this problem). If you can swap out the energy saver for a traditional incandescent bulb, I suggest doing that because most cameras perform better under such lighting colour wise.

The light is just one of those large modern low energy bulbs in a lampshade hanging from the ceiling. The lampshade will have increased the area of the illumination affectively which in turn will give softer shadows. The width of the light source is what effects the sharpness (or lack of) of the shadows rather than the light intensity (though people often get confused with this aspect and think that a dim light will give softer shadows when in fact it's the size of the lightsource). That's why sunlight is so unique because it's a pin-point that is 93 million miles a away.

To replicate sunlight with very sharp shadows indoors it might be worth messing about with a single LED torch kept still from as far away as is practical. I imagine the exposure could be quite long though.

Chris, thanks for the response. I also use a DSLR - Canon 400D (my first and a starter level unit - but reasonable to play with) and when outside go for a smaller apperture, often to F22 or up to F32 depending on Focal and lens used... but at the extreme I suspect that some distortion can creep in, so often keep it back a bit (F25 seems a good comprimise when there's plenty of light). I tend to use my Canon 17-85 IS USM for most work... but occasionally use my old Sigma 70-300 for distant shots. For work-in-progress shots I usually use my old Canon G2 - robust and simple 10Mp, with macro... shots always a little grainy when pushed to ISO 400, but satisfies that type of shot - but outside with the 400D at ISO 100 and RAW for the "proper" shots, taken on a tripod.. IS switched off, using self timer.

I think that the light you've got gives a very soft light effect which seems very well suited to these photos. I can't really praise these... it'd be like stating that Constable wasn't a bad artist... you know the quality you achieve is well appreciated.

However, I thank you for sharing the technique, and for confirming that I'm at least on the right track.

Regards and thanks... Jon

It's interesting that what you say about the F stop, digi capture does appear far more sensitive to diffraction giving a softer image if the lens is stopped down too much. Yet one can use the same lens with film and have less of an issue - it must be the way the sensor reacts to very small apertures. I have a 55mm Micro Nikkor which is a very highly acclaimed lens, yet stop it down much beyond f16 and the image including the precise point of focus is not nearly as good at pixel level as at f11. But, use it on film at f32 and it is pin sharp!