watch – Ming Thein | Photographer

POTD: Breguet La Tradition, part 2

February 25, 2012 by Ming Thein

Another take on the same watch shot a few days ago with the Nikon D700. Leica M9-P, Visoflex III, Bellows II, Zeiss ZM 2/50 Planar. And one Nikon SB700, two SB900s.

A very different view to the D700, right? The transparent trapezoid is a pallet jewel, which controls the locking and unlocking (tick and tock) of the escapement, along with transferring rotation impulses to the balance. It’s barely visible to the naked eye, and no more than a millimeter long, which makes the whole frame around 8x12mm, or about 3:1 magnification. Lighting is normally tricky, but I got lucky with this watch – it has a transparent cutout around the back precisely where the pallet fork and jewels are, which allowed me to light it from behind, with just a little fill from the front to provide definition to the gears. MT

Filed Under: Leica, POTD, Watches/ Horology Tagged With: breguet, escapement, la tradition, leica, macro, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photo, photography, potd, thein, watch

POTD: Breguet La Tradition

February 23, 2012 by Ming Thein

Breguet La Tradition. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G + 2xSB900s

So how did I do this? It’s not that hard: watch your lighting, and watch your backgrounds. With a sufficiently dark background and perpendicular lighting (the key here is not too diffuse, else your background will also be lit) the reflective surface of the watch with shoot the light right back at the camera. Since the watch is several orders of magnitude more reflective than the background, exposing properly for the watch will completely dial out the background, or at least reduce its luminance to a level where it’s negligible. I could have burned it down to zero, but a hint of texture and delineation for the strap worked best. MT

Filed Under: POTD, Watches/ Horology Tagged With: breguet la tradition, horology, macro, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon, photography, potd, thein, watch

POTD: Vintage Tudor Submariner

February 21, 2012 by Ming Thein

Vintage Tudor Submariner. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G Micro + 2xSB900s

Yes, that’s a Rolex crown. Rolex is the parent company of Tudor; or, Tudor is the ‘entry level’ Rolex model. There weren’t really that many differences back then, but these days the main difference is in the movement – all of the Rolexes have in-house movements but the Tudors have Swatch Group-derived ETAs. If you’ve ever wondered how I get lighting like this, the trick is all in the diffusers; the better your lighting control, the less aggressive your specular highlights will be. I use a system of movable translucent but semi-opaque perspex panels to diffuse my flashes. (It’s custom built, so don’t bother looking for one). The other trick is that although the perspective appears to be one way, it doesn’t mean that the subject has to be shot in that orientation, only lit in that orientation and rotated later. MT

See the full series and writeup here on fratellowatches