Psychedelic Mushrooms

October 23, 2010 Pete

You may have noted from my last post that I had dug out my Olympus OM T32 colour filters, and started to experiment again with different colour effects using an ideal subject, mushrooms. All of these photo’s were taken on Fuji Velvia 50 slide film at Knightwood Oak in the New Forest.

This time round instead of using multiple flashes and multiple filters I just used one flash, my Olympus OM T32. The flash was off camera (not fixed to the hot shoe), and was attached to my Olympus OM 4ti camera body by the use of a TTL auto cord. I have the 5m TTL auto cord, which gives me a lot of cable to be able to move the flash too pretty much any position I like. This is helping me to determine the right working distance for the flash to get the best result. Too close and the flash will put down too much light so either blowing out the picture completely or creating ghosting effects. If you know a good way to work this out then it would be great if you could let me know.

I mounted my camera to a tripod for all of these pictures, and I also include a shot in natural light to emphasize my psychedelic ones. (Clicking on any shot will allow you to cycle through all of them)

First up is a bunch of mushrooms (IDs very welcome), and this shows you the different amount of flash light put down with the distance to the subject. The mushrooms were raised up from the ground by a log so I positioned the flash to the right and below. The great thing about the Olympus T32 flash is that you can move the flash head upwards in increments to direct the light. 1st shot distance was about 1 arm length and the 2nd was 2 arms length away.

Zuiko Olympus OM 90mm F2 macro lens, F11 & Yellow T32 colour filter.

Shot 1

Shot 2

The next shot was with a red colour filter, and it kinda works for me.

Distance 2 arm lengths.

and here are the bunch of mushrooms in natural light. There are two shots here to also show you the difference you can achieve with different depths of field (aperture setting on your lens). The first is at a stopped down aperture of F11 whereas the second is at a lot wider (open) aperture of F2.8. In the first you can see that most of the mushrooms are in focus, and there is a lot more detail shown of the background habitat, whereas the second blurs the background along with limiting the number in focus.

Shallow depth of field (wide open aperture)

A Bunch of Mushrooms! Shallower Depth of Field

I have titled the next two, a different set of mushrooms, as the ‘Green Aliens’ & the ‘Ghost Shrooms’ . As you may have guessed the ‘Green Aliens’ were taken with a green colour filter, whilst the ‘Ghost Shrooms’ were with a blue colour filter.

The mushrooms were found on the side of a large fallen down tree stump, and the Olympus T32 flash was placed directly below, about an arms length of away.

Zuiko Olympus OM 80mm F4 macro lens, Aperture F5.6.

The ‘Green Aliens’