Scoville Scorcheress - a photo on Flickriver

             #MacroMondays
 #Dried

Entirely unintendedly, really. I think combining a chili pepper with a flame of sorts is a little cliché. But why is there smoke swirling around behind this dried Trinidad Scorpion pepper when I hadn't placed a smoke or fire source behind the chili, neither a lit candle nor a match to be hazardously lit (finger scorching included) just in time for the focus stacking? At first, I had put my go-to tool for backlit scenes behind the Scorpion, the small "Ledlenser" flashlight, but for the fairly small peppers in the bag its diameter was just a tad too big so I either had an unpleasant halo around my subject or a light leakage under the chili no matter how I placed it. 

Time for plan B which brings us to the unintended part: I also have a very small, octagonal-shaped, extremely bright, and powerful  "TrustFire Mini-X" key-ring flashlight that proved to be slim enough to disappear behind the chili. So I leaned the chili against the flashlight, set the latter to non-stop light, and then set the camera. When that was done, I looked at the display and saw a weird blue streak behind the pepper. "This is one bright flashlight!", I thought, assuming what I saw was a light beam. But then I noticed that the "beam" moved, and all of a sudden the air was also filled with a certain spiciness that started to scratch my throat... Well, this flashlight is not only very bright but it also gets very hot very quickly when it's constantly on – and the dried Scorpion's skin was (still is, I should add) wafer-thin. So it seems that the flashlight had started to scorch the dried chili. I quickly pressed the shutter button, nervously watching that thin "smoke ghost" move around while the camera recorded 30 images (15 ORFs and 15 JPGs; the JPGs are combined to a final stacking image in-camera), and immediately switched off the flashlight and removed the chili once the stacking was done. Phew ;) An unintended, unexpected, somewhat cliché, but definitely nice "accident".

I think there was no real danger that the chili might have been set on fire during the short focus stacking time, and the single swirl of smoke also was very thin. Helicon Focus, however, combined all of the 15 different ORF "smoke ghosts" into a more voluminous set of streaks which I think looked good so I left it that way. Size of the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper: 3 cm x 2,5 cm / 1,18 x 0,98 inches.

Happy Macro Monday, Everyone!

Taken on: November 19, 2023

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Macro Mondays

HMM

macro

close-up

chili pepper

chili

capsicum

Capsicum chinense

Trinidad Moruga Scorpion

hot

spicy

scorched

scoville

smoke

backlit

texture

fiery

red

blue

low-key photography

focus stacking

flashlight

TrustFire Mini-X

OM-D E-M1 Mark III

M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm 1:2.8 Macro

DXO PhotoLab 7

Nik Collection

Color Efex

Analog Efex

Micro Four Thirds

ThroughHerLens

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Camera: Olympus E-M1MarkIII, f/2.8, 1/80 sec, 60mm (=120mm), ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Olympus E-M1MarkIII
Lens:	OLYMPUS M.60mm F2.8 Macro
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	0.013 sec (1/80)
Focal Length:	60mm (35mm equivalent: 120mm)
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	-1.7 EV
Flash:	On, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Spot
White Balance:	Auto
Saturation:	High
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 13.0.1 (Windows)
Show full info

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