Doraemon and the case of Armani Exchange Watch

How I clicked Doraemon & my Armani Exchange Watch in my Jugaad Studio

Here is a little fun story in the garb of photography tips. Or is it the other way ?

I was sitting in front of my computer in deep thoughts when the younger one came and said,

“ Papa, let me show you something”, and without waiting for my response she presented to me a box of a colorful figurine of her favorite cartoon characters – Doraemon, Hello Kitty, Donald Duck and Winnie The Pooh.  I looked at them and immediately assumed they are candies.

Happy at the thought of getting a candy, I was about to pop up Doraemon in my mouth, the daughter dear giggled

“Papa these are erasers, not candies, you think everything is candy and want to put it in your mouth”

Totally taken off guard, I remembered just a few years ago, it was me who gave her instructions every time, we handed her a new toy, “This is to play, not to put in your mouth ok ? “

The roles seem to have reversed, even as she continues to play with her toys.

That brings me to the topic of this post.  We have an unwritten understanding that when she gets some new toys, I click pictures for her, same goes when she solves some puzzle or creates a new design from her Lego blocks.  She has this set of animation character erasers as a gift from her cousin Himanshu, a budding photographer cum model.

The deal with these eraser figurines is that each part can be removed and reassembled on the little creature. So you can take off the gloves, neck, shoes etc. from the figurines and reassemble them.  Now usually, I would just click the images with my mobile phones, but I was getting ready to click my brand new Armani Exchange Watch that I received as a prize for writing this blog post

So Delhi Confluence at The Lalit

The best part is I was not even aware that I have participated in a competition, as I have just written a post to share my experience at the confluence. So when the PR person from So Delhi called me and congratulated me for winning the best blog post about the So Delhi Confluence, all I could mutter was

“Oh, Thanks” 

Long story short,  there was a contest by So Delhi that the best blog post, post the confluence will win an Armani Exchange Watch, and without even realizing the same yours truly desi Traveler was declared the winner.  Remember Lord Krishna said Do the work don’t worry about the fruits”  So here I was getting fruits of my labor as the good folks at So Delhi wanted me to visit their office as the Armani Exchange Watch is an expensive one and they were a bit reluctant to send it via couriers. On my part, I was a bit reluctant to go to their office to collect the watch.  Finally, Twilight Fairy aka Priyanka Sachar came as the fairy in shining armor and was entrusted the responsibility of bringing the Armani Exchange watch.  Though the fair maiden was quite prompt in bringing my watch, I was not prompt in collecting it from her. Only when one day Wife Jee remembered that I had told her about my win, that she enquired

“What happened to that watch, Priyanka was supposed to get it for you, or your friends are also like you totally Bhullakkad types?”

Needless to say, I blamed Priyanka for the delay in the watch handing over ceremony. Well, long story short, a “Watch Handover Ceremony” was arranged at the nearest Starbucks, and to the amusement of their staff, the Twilight Fairy handed me over the shiny new Armani Exchange Watch.  So dear So Delhi folks via this blog post I also confirm that Ms. Sachar has completed her solemn duty of collecting and delivering Armani Exchange, the watch to me. She is now absolved of any further responsibilities towards the watch like getting the guarantee card stamped or contacting Armani Exchange folks to find more about the possibility of exchanging the watches.  However, if Ms. Sachar insists on following with Armani on her own accord, she has my taciturn support in the form of RTs to any tweets she may want to do.

(Basically it means, that I like the watch, and as they say – Don’t count the guarantee of Gift Watches)

But hey let us move forward and share the pictures that I clicked off my Armani Exchange watch and the  almost edible looking  Doraemon and Hello Kitty figurines.  I was to click Donald Duck and Winnie the Pooh also, but looking at the tedious process of setting the light, looking for a reflective surface, focusing etc. the kiddo got bored so the project got limited to only Hello Kitty, Doraemon and the Armani Exchange Watch.

 After the long stories let me quickly give you the settings for clicking these images

First the equipment used in my Jugaad Studio 

1. Nikon DSLR Camera in manual mode
2. One Studio Light with softbox ( two is always better than one in this case but I did not have the  patience)
3. A Reflective surface to get a reflection. In my case, I just used the reflective black surface of the speaker of our music system. That we rarely use ever since music moved to blue tooth speakers.
4. A Black curtain to create a black background
5. The lens used was my trusted Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8 G prime lens
6. Sturdy Manfrotto Tripod
7. Camera Remote to trigger the flash and camera simultaneously.
8. Lightroom to process images.

The settings were fairly simple and are given below each image, but let me explain what we wanted to click

1. Sharp image with reflection with everything in focus- So an F-Stop of F/11 to F 16 was used
2. Low noise – so an ISO of 100-250 was experimented with
3. Shutter speed: As I was using external studio light synced with my Nikon D7000, shutter speed used was between 1/125 to 1/160 which was enough to capture sharp images.
4. Since I was using tripod to stabilize the camera and a remote to trigger  there was no worry about camera shake.

As I was using only one main light I had kept the normal Tube light in the room on hence you will see more than one catch light  on the watch. The nonreflective surface of rubber figurines did not have that problem.

Well with this we completed today’s post about ” How to click Watch with reflection in Home Studio” the rest of the stories mentioned in the post can just be considered incidental. But before I go I would like to thank – So Delhi and Armani Exchange for the gift and Twilight Fairy to bring the watch on my behalf.

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