Showing posts with label Soft-Box. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Soft-Box. Show all posts
6 Jun 2013
Three Light Product Photography Tutorial
Today I have a quick and simple "how to" on putting together a nice slightly low key product shot with three lights. Here is the final result and then I will go through the steps on how to build the lighting to get this photograph:
31 May 2013
How to Enlarge Your Lightsource for Softer Light, easily.
I did a little experiment this evening just to demonstrate how to make a really large lightsource and give much more even light on your subject than just blasting away with direct light.
I have two 65x65cm light boxes that are quite handy. So here is a pic of them set up pointing directly at a nice Dutch vase. The camera was on the tripod in front of the table.
From here it looks like that should make for some pretty good light on the vase, but as we can see in the next photo they also leave some not so great specular highlights on the vase and two distinct shadow areas behind the vase.
Not a bad photograph as such, but we can do much better than that! So, in order to increase the overall size of the light source I simply faced the lights up at the ceiling. Of course I also had to increase the power output of the lights because the light now had much further to travel and the inverse square law robs us of light very quickly when we increase the distance the light has to travel.
As you can see from the pic above the light has now been spread over a much larger area. So what has that done for our lovely Dutch vase?
Well the first thing you notice is that the ugly specular highlights have vanished and the light is much more evenly spread on the vase itself. The second thing is that the shadows behind the vase have also disappeared. Overall a much more pleasing result!
If all you have are two speedlights instead of the bigger studio lights then don't be disheartened because the exact same principle still holds true and will work just great. Simply pump up the power a bit and let 'er rip, it will have a similar wonderful softening effect on the quality of light.
Happy product photographing folks!
I have two 65x65cm light boxes that are quite handy. So here is a pic of them set up pointing directly at a nice Dutch vase. The camera was on the tripod in front of the table.
From here it looks like that should make for some pretty good light on the vase, but as we can see in the next photo they also leave some not so great specular highlights on the vase and two distinct shadow areas behind the vase.
Not a bad photograph as such, but we can do much better than that! So, in order to increase the overall size of the light source I simply faced the lights up at the ceiling. Of course I also had to increase the power output of the lights because the light now had much further to travel and the inverse square law robs us of light very quickly when we increase the distance the light has to travel.
As you can see from the pic above the light has now been spread over a much larger area. So what has that done for our lovely Dutch vase?
Well the first thing you notice is that the ugly specular highlights have vanished and the light is much more evenly spread on the vase itself. The second thing is that the shadows behind the vase have also disappeared. Overall a much more pleasing result!
If all you have are two speedlights instead of the bigger studio lights then don't be disheartened because the exact same principle still holds true and will work just great. Simply pump up the power a bit and let 'er rip, it will have a similar wonderful softening effect on the quality of light.
Happy product photographing folks!
17 May 2013
A (fairly) Standard Three Light Portrait
Three Elinchrom lights used. Main light camera left Elinchrom 4 bounced into a black backed umbrella from about 45° up and 45° to the subject. Fill light camera right Elinchrom 4 about 1 stop down from main shot through a transparent umbrella. Back light Elinchrom 2 right and behind subject in a medium sized softbox. Nikon D300s and Nikkor 50mm f1.8D.
All this and another light, light stands, plus a background stand, backdrop, two cameras complete with lenses, plus a tripod all fit into one large rolling case to become my highly portable studio ready to leave and shoot on location at any time. Very convenient indeed!
12 Apr 2013
Putting my Light Tent and Elinchrom lights to Good Use
For the last couple of years I have been buying up beer mugs in second hand stores, and it was all started by my daughter who purchased this mug for me at a boot sale:
It turned out to be pre German unification, so it has a little age to it as well. Since then I have added to my collection and below you can find a few of them. I used my light tent with black board inside for the seamless background, an Elinchrom D-Lite-it 2 with 65x65 softbox and Nikon D300s with Nikon 40mm f/2.8 DX G AF-S attached. All manual settings for consistency from shot to shot. Post processed with DXO Optics Pro 8.
1 Apr 2013
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