356: Fairy-O-Lights

Settings: f/1.8, 1/5, ISO 800, 50mm Pentacon M42, 17mm extension.

094: Lightbulb Glass

The tip of a non-functioning GU10 halogen lightbulb. One thing broken bulbs are just as good for as working ones is not being turned on when a photograph is taken.
My advice is don't go for the cheap ones; they're rubbish.

Settings: f/16, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 77mm extension, 1/4 flash, foil reflector.

049: Glowing Filament

This grimy old light bulb was discovered in the attic when we moved into our current house, nestled among mortar dust and mineral wool.
What's interesting about the setup of this shot is that I connected the bulb to a home-made fader box (dimmer switches wired to sockets) and was able to adjust the bulb's intensity to fine-tune the outcome independently from the shutter speed.
I like the internal reflections on this shot. The image would be no better without them, and they add much interest. They also remind me that it's all encased in glass.

I used 29mm of extension rings to a 50mm M42 lens to get the right degree of magnification for accomodating the filaments comforatbly in the frame. Once I decided that I was going to use f/16 and ISO 100 (the least sensitive settings) for maximum depth of field and detail I took a test exposure with the camera's best guess of metering and faded the bulb's down quite low. The exposure I settled on was 1/10 sec with a slightly dimmer bulb than before, as I got the impresssion that keeping the filament dim would keep some of the finer detail and have less blown-out highlights.
I am not sure if I was right, but I will have to try a similar shot again sometime, and experiment with doing things differently.