P3D Re: Shooting Rhinos in the Dark

["Greg Wageman" <gjw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Bruce Springsteen <bsspringsteen@xxxxxxxxx>


>What film should Mick take?  What speed?  Print or slide?  Or both?
Which
>film in which cameras?  Should he shoot the small dioramas with a
normal
>base or try to use a reduced base to "scale them up"?  What would you
do?
>Any pitfalls to watch for?


Bruce,

I've taken stereos of life-sized dioramas in museums (the California
Academy of Sciences in particular), necessarily with flash because the
ambient lighting is usually exceptionally dim (I presume so as not to
prematurely "age" the exhibits with excessive UV).  The biggest "trick",
in my mind, is to study the angle of the glass and to try to anticipate
the angle of "flashback".  If the glass is angled downward to avoid
reflecting ceiling lighting at the typical viewer, you will want to be
sure that your flash is angled downward as well (it helps to be tall).
I generally took the shots from the extreme right or left side of the
diorama so that any "bounce" off the glass in the horizontal axis would
be aimed away from the lens.  Unfortunately if the glass is greasy from
the finger/hand/faceprints of prior museum-goers, you will get glare no
matter what you do because of diffuse reflection.  You can minimize the
effect of this somewhat by shooting close to the glass, using a large
aperture.  Depth-of-field won't be too much of  a problem with a
diorama, since they tend not to go more than 10-20 feet deep.  Of course
the background will be flat as the board it's painted on, but there's
not much you can do about that in any case.

With miniature dioramas, I would take both normal stereobase shots, and
hypos if you have the time and opportunity to do so.  A good miniature
diorama can look pretty cool when made to look "normal" using
hypostereo.  Not every diorama is going to fare well using this
technique, though, but it's certainly worth a try.  It wouldn't hurt to
try to get to know someone at the museum who might be able to get you
off-hours access.

     -Greg W. (gjw@xxxxxxxxxx)











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