Another Campbell's Soup Can, Another 15 Minutes

Another Campbell's Soup Can, Another 15 Minutes

It's easy to dismiss Pop Art such as Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans, but looking at it with an open mind I have to think that there is something there that is more than just a painting of a can. Would it be viewed differently if it were a painting of a piece of Venetian glass? So I set about making some images of my Campbell's soup can and also used it to explore more closely the performance of the Canon PowerShot SX40HS that I started looking at yesterday. From the outset, I am not claiming the pictures are High Art, in fact I am not claiming anything other than an hour or so immersed in thinking about what I was doing and trying to achieve. Maybe on some level that is an artistic process in itself.

Technically, it soon became apparent that to get the best out of the camera I needed to move it from ISO 400 to ISO 100. This gave me back the edge on sharpness that I felt was missing. Then I put the camera on a firm tripod, turned off the IS and set the self timer to a 2 second delay to avoid any movement of the camera caused by pressing the shutter release. The lighting was simple daylight from a large window and to this I added the room's tungsten lighting to give mixed colour temperatures. This adds a little warmth to some of the reflections. Then we place the subject very critically in terms of position in the frame and also in terms the height we decide for the camera on the tripod. Even with a soup can, there are many variables.

So here is my Campbell's Soup Can, Condensed Mushroom, February 2021, at ISO 100.


And here is the same shot at ISO 400, which does make the sharpness a little mushy by comparison.



Moving on to alternatives, I can find a warm feeling towards my favourite can of Haggis.



And another traditional product, making good use of Kodak-like colours to make the packaging stand out.



Finally, some product shots of cameras, and images suitable for eBay and the like are so easy with bridge cameras. The sheer range of the lenses from macro upwards means that virtually anything can be recorded with the same lens and camera, without any messing with changing lenses or accessories.

Pentax Q-S1 with standard prime lens.



Nikon Coolpix 4300.



The Canon SX40HS is now steadily endearing itself to me, so the next step will be some wildlife, as soon as that is possible.