Magical Book

This technique was featured on the The Strobist blog a good few months ago but I just had to try it. I know it's copied but isn't that what part of all this is about. The basic idea is copied but everyone's rendition of it is different. I'm reasonably happy with my results from this first attempt but there are a couple of things I may change on the next attempt. A little bit more ambient on the back of the book might work well as would a bit more depth of field. I had to open up the aperture to f4.5 to get the ambient up to this level. Shutter speed was 1/60th second. Increasing the ISO would gain me some depth of field by allowing me to stop the lens down by the same number of stops. The flash was on minimum power of 1/128th with a sheet of white paper wrapped around it to diffuse it. If I want to close down the aperture to achieve more depth of field while keeping the same ISO I will have to provide more light on the back of the book. Doing this under higher ambient light conditions will raise the background light which I don't really want. It may be necessary to use a second strobe through an umbrella in front of the subject on very low power and a reasonable distance away.