Gale Spring, Adjunct Associate Professor of Scientific Photography at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia demonstrates a method used to provide even lighting for a highly reflective object.
Thank you. You could have tried to make still life photography over complicated to make yourself seem self important...but your humility, skill and generous knowledge taught us simple basics that is the foundation of good lighting. I am grateful for your generosity in teaching us the simple concepts in simple terms. Easy to understand and not necessary to spend a ton of money.
Excellent video production! The lesson on the proceedure for tabletop forensic imaging spoke volumes. Gale Spring's statement about eliminating specular highlights misleads. A small light source like the on-camera flash used by the crime scene photographer, which yields a white dot for a specular highlight has no detail in it as Mr. Dale states. Having a large light source softens the contrast of the specular highlights, which enables us to have detail in the specular highlights. The way to record the black handle of the subject knife is to spread the specular highlight over the form by using the soft light, as in this good demo. Thus, Mr. Dale ably shows his students how to control, not eliminate the specularity.
@@Ishijah1 Sorry for the long delay. I just saw your question. The best book for lighting is Light Science and Magic. There are various editions - all good. Easy to find via Amazon or a good bookstore that has photo books. The authors are Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fuqua. A Focal Press book. A definite must for photo lighting.
Thanks for you comment. Jewellery photography has to be one of the most challenging applications. Small and lots of shiny surfaces at every angle. I can only assume you have a lot of patience! I'm glad to have helped in a small (and possibly shiny) way.
It definitely wasted a lot of time trying to figure things out for myself and watching videos that didn't address my specific needs. Luckily, I found your video :) Things are moving along faster and my photos are starting to look a lot better.
May I also suggest a book called "Light Science & Magic' by Hunter, Biver and Fuqua. Pretty easy to read and covers the concepts of lighting extremely well. There are several editions. I'm not sure what the latest version is. All good.
Great, straight to the point tutorial...At work I have to photograph a lot of products packed in transparent polyethylene bags, which are much more shiny than the knife used as example in this video...Any idea if that same technique shown here would work for those shiny polyethylene bags ?
Mike, great question. Actually, you want to basically do the opposite of what I have demonstrated. To image the knife, you are actually imaging the reflection of the light source off the surface of the knife. With your shiny polyethylene bags, you want to avoid/eliminate the reflection. Without seeing your products (and problem), I suggest you slightly move the position of the light source where the reflection disappears or, at least, is minimised. It's like looking in a mirror - at one angle you see yourself but move slightly left or right and you only see what's basically behind you. Another possible solution involves using polarising filters over the light source(s) and the camera lens. Polarising filters control/eliminate reflections on many surfaces. For total control, you need one over the light source and one on the lens. I'm sorry I don't have a RU-vid on that technique. It's a very useful technique to know - maybe a new video will come! Depending on where you live, try to contact an art gallery/museum that photographs art works and ask them about cross-polarised light photography. I'm happy to comment further - maybe offline so we don't turn my response into a full-blown lecture!
Thanks for your question. The one in the video is made by Broncolor. There are many good brands of soft boxes on the market. Most people are limited to those that fit (or are made for) their flash equipment. In general, all are fine. You can also make diffusion flats from materials like ripstop. The main concern with any diffusion material is it does not have a color bias. With most digital cameras you can do a custom white balance, but this becomes complicated if you are using, say, three soft boxes with different diffusion materials, all exhibiting slightly different color biases. And sorry if I told you more than you wanted to know!
Greetings Mr. Springs. I see you already answer a question about what brand and model of light unit did you use in your excelent demonstration, but, I'm still confused, Is it a strobe or a continuous light source?
Me, just looking for ways to take pics of my dope gaming rig with glass side panels: I bet youtube has some simple tricks to avoid glare in the glass. Also me after watching a forencics technician with a whole setup specialized for this use: Yep I'm shit outta luck.
You must have the world's most fascinating, yet I'm sure at times upsetting, job. I noticed your light didn't look like the average studio strobe, is it different in any way? Thank you for this video.
Thanks for your comment, Mark. The job does push your limits at times. Challenging, but rewarding. As for the light, the one in the video is a Broncolor Impact 41 (no longer made) and an 80cm Broncolor soft box. I like it because it's relatively light, compact size, produces a lot of light and extremely good colour quality. There are many good soft boxes on the market today and combined with some small portable electronic flash units (like the Nikon 910 if you're a Nikon geek) do an excellent job. I have larger (and newer) flash units similar to the one in the video, but they are also heavier and, for tabletop photography, put out a lot more light than I need. FYI, the demo with the knife came out of a recent case where blood streaks combined with black ash from a fire was obscuring a lot of detail in the photograph of the knife blade (taken by the police with a in-built, on-camera flash). It was, as many things are, simply a problem with lighting.
Joshua, thanks for you observation. I agree with you. I would have freaked out if one of my students had done that. In my 50+ years of doing photography, I have never broken anything....well, not exactly true. In my early years, I had a Sekonic light meter strap around my next but placed the actual meter in my shirt pocket. I was working in ankle-deep sea water when I bent over to look at something. The meter was dangling in the water like a fishing lure. It never worked again and I don't place it in my pocket any longer. If it's dangling around my waist, I always know it's there.
