 BetterPhoto Member |
Lighting a Reflective Subject
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David King |
When you are dealing with highly reflective items, you don't light the object directly. Instead you light what is being reflected in the object back to the camera. The most common and the easiest approach is to put the object in a "light tent." By lighting the tent itself, you can create modeling and yet the item reflects the light sides of the tent so you can see the surfaces. You can buy several ready-made ones, or you can easily create one using rolls of paper. A simple PCV pipe framework can be used to hold the paper in position. A hole for the camera lens is all that is needed to make the shot. It looks pretty complex but is actually incredibly simple to do. David www.ndavidking.com
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- Shirley D. Cross-Taylor Contact Shirley D. Cross-Taylor Shirley D. Cross-Taylor's Gallery |
Although David's suggestion is good, you don't need to go to that much trouble. I photograph people's artwork so they'll have slides for jurying into gallery shows, etc. I use two strobes that have modeling lights so that I can see where the light is going to fall. You can do the same thing with two 100 watt bulbs in reflectors. Just turn them so that they light the object indirectly. Check through the camera's viewfinder to see if any glare is showing, then make adjustments to the lights...turning them farther away, or moving them as needed, until you see no glare on the object in the viewfinder. Of course, if you are using tungsten lights, you will need to use either tungsten-balanced film, or a correcting filter.
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