Apple of My Eyeby
russbbrinkComment by russbbrink: Thanks for the comments everyone.
I din't even realize how read the skin was, until a week later when I looked at it to see how it did. I knew the focus wasn't great but after 4+ hours working on it over as many days, it was time to call it good enough.
There were a couple of tricky parts to getting the reflection, and my technique still needs improvement...
1) The angles: The apple close to the lens, but just out of sight of the shot, and about 1/3 of the distance from the eye to the camera. Then I had my model move his eye around to get the apple as close to the center of the pupil as possible. Having the model Look about 1/2 way between the center of the camera and the apple seemed to work best.
2) The lighting: I did it outside, a few hours before twilight, but I think if I try it again, I'll shoot for a little after noon. I needed to get the apple really brightly light, and the face had to be protected from being lit too brightly, or you couldn't see the reflections. I had to build a black background to surround the model's eye, so no other reflections, besides the apple would get through. at first I kept getting a bunch of reflections from the street, etc.
Also important was having the overal lighting bright enough that I could get the action stopped, even when stopping down. I would have liked to stop all the way down to f/32 or so, but f/18 was the best I could do with the light I had.
3) Focus: See above note on overall lighting. Also, now that I've had a chance to play around with the macro extension tube I just got, I think that might have helped, especially if used closer to noon, with the aperature set down a few stops.
