Broccoli Sprouts in Black Tray

Broccoli Sprouts in Black Tray, originally uploaded by carlcmc.

Taken with a Nikon D80.

* Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/320) [+]
* Aperture: f/11 [+]
* Focal Length: 200 mm [+]
* ISO Speed: 400 [+]

Strobist Info: 43" White satin shoot-through umbrella camera right. SB-800 at M 1/1 and SB-600 at M 1/2. Both strobes triggered via Nikon CLS/AWS. Umbrella approximately 10-12 inches from cup. 7' white posterboard/styrofoam reflector camera left approximately 16" away.

Technical choices: I chose my Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR Lens for the telephoto ability and shot at 200mm. I stopped down to f/11 to try and achieve as much acceptable depth of field as possible. Higher than that would start to get soft (lens itself and due to circle of confusion) with this lens otherwise I would have went up to even f/16. I had all the lights off except for a fluorescent bank camera right to allow focusing. At 1/320, f/11 and ISO 400 a test shot left the frame entirely black and the fluorescents did not contribute to overall exposure.

Processing: Adobe Lightroom 1.3.1 - Cropping, exposure, recovery, fill light, black point, Clarity, and sharpening all performed.

Real info: Even though there are still bits of snow on the ground, the temperature has been rising quickly. I brought in three buckets of dirt from the garden. I have filled several planting trays and planted broccoli, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and papas. Additionally we have some raspberry bushes sitting in a 5-gallon bucket of water in front of the patio doors. They are just starting to sprout. In this and the other photo I have uploaded you can see my broccoli just starting to sprout. In this image you see the multiple sprouts in each container. I will have to thin them out. They are now 3 days old from the day that I placed them dry on the soil. I didn't cover them up, I just seeded them on top. It was easiest that way. The fine root filaments are fascinating to me! One guess which direction the sun is?