Woodturning photography

Woodturning photography

Trying to freeze a wood shaving in flight!

More and more I realise how important it is to have good images of my work or of me making my work. It seems now more than ever the world is very visual and capturing good images are very important to me.

I have spent quite a while reading and practising with my camera and I bought my first DSLR a nikon D3200 about 2 years ago which although at first seems very complicated, it has drastically improved my images.

I now fell confident that I can get good still images of my work on a graduated background, like this box that I made recently.

Black and white ebony box with damson fruit wood collar and internal lid.

But I have always wanted to capture a long ribbon of shaving as it fly's off the gouge makes a beautiful pattern in mid air before finally landing on the workshop floor.

1st try

I tried my iphone 6 on burst mode and this is what I captured

Iphone 6 with burst mode

I like the image as it does show the movement of the shaving but it wasn't what I had in mind as I wanted to shaving to look frozen in time.

2nd try

Next I tried my nikon camera with a 35mm prime lens which is very fast at f1.8

Nikon d3200 35mm prime at F1.8, iso100, 1/100s

I was a bit disappointed with this image and didn't understand how I could make it faster, I automatically thought it was the frames per second that my camera could capture which is 4fps where as some of the more expensive DSLR can capture 8 or 10

I asked a woodturning friend who is a skateboard/bmx photographer and asked on a photography forum and was told it isn't my FPS its the shutter speed and I need to increase the amount of light or increase the iso which will increase the shutter speed (I am using aperture priority mode)

3rd try

Nikon d3200 35mm prime F2.5, iso3200, 1/3200s

At iso3200 I was getting a shutter speed of 1/3200 and now I was starting to get the results I wanted.

4th try

Nikon d3200 35mm prime F2.5 iso 6400, 1/2500

My 4th try is my favourite as it captures a full ribbon, at the higher iso my camera gets whats called noise which on a full screen basically looks a little grainy to me but on smaller images I don't notice it. What I don't understand is that the shutter speed at iso6400 was actually slower than at the lower iso? I will have to ask my friend about that :-)

here is my wife's favourite image from the 600 images that i took during the day