Reptile & Amphibian Forums

with the manual mode on my little Canon Powershot A70 (still waiting for the screen of death to happen). Most of my snakes are brumating in my basement so last night I went downstairs and took a few shots. It was quite dark. A small fluorescent indirectly lit the area. I took the first shot with the following settings:

Flash used: No
Focal length: 9.4mm (35mm equivalent: 64mm)
CCD width: 5.28mm
Exposure time: 0.500 s (1/2)
Aperture: f/3.5
Whitebalance: Manual
Metering Mode: matrix
Exposure Mode: Auto bracketing

Then I tried a shot with the flash:

Flash used: Yes (auto, red eye reduction mode)
Focal length: 9.4mm (35mm equivalent: 64mm)
CCD width: 5.28mm
Exposure time: 0.017 s (1/60)
Aperture: f/3.5
Whitebalance: Auto
Metering Mode: matrix

The two different light sources make such a big difference in the look of the colors. It was quite a revelation.

So I went back and looked at a photo I once took of a mandarin under an "active UV" bulb I used for my uros...

Flash used: No (auto)
Focal length: 5.4mm (35mm equivalent: 37mm)
CCD width: 5.28mm
Exposure time: 0.017 s (1/60)
Aperture: f/2.8
Whitebalance: Auto
Metering Mode: matrix

Anyway, I'm sure it's old hat to you old hands but I thought it might be interesting to some newbies like me.

Regards
John

That is interesting.

The overall yellowish wash in the last photo is bizarre. It would be interesting to see what it would look like with a couple of different white balance settings using that bulb. Is the yellow wash an artifact of the bulb reflection fooling your sensor or is it some sort of fluorescence of the snake's scales with the wider UV spectrum?

Have you ever looked at one under UV light?
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

Chris:
It is weird. I'm guessing that the light is freaking out the sensor but who knows. I'll look for a black light to test out the fluorescence idea. In the meantime I'll try the white balance tests.

Thanks for the input.

John