Taking pictures of crystal

[Grentz]

Hey everyone,

Does anyone have tips on taking pictures of crystal glass? I have a few crystal bowls I am going to be listing on eBay that I need to take some pictures of but I keep getting horrible results.

They are clear cut glass (waterford) bowls.

I have a 30D w/420ex Flash and 24-105. I have tried using my DIY lightbox but the green or white backgrounds do not work well it seems and I dont know if it is bright enough.

Any tips? I really need some help here.

[PacAce]

Maybe this will help:

http://www.tabletopstudio.com/documents/glass_photography.htm

[poloman]

i would suggest surround the bowls with black material (velvet would be nice) and lighting them from below. You might try cross lighting at various angles as well. You will need to get your flash off camera. You could use a couple of 500 watt halogen work lights.

[tweatherred]

This is a classic difficult to light subject. Depending on how you want the finished shot to look you will probably want to use a light field or dark field technique, both of which are covered in detail in the excellent book Light: Science and Magic (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0240808193/bookstorenow79-20) (and I see there is a brand new edition out). They have an entire chapter devoted to glass. It may seem like a lot of work for E-Bay photos, but it will give you a chance to experiment and learn a little.

[johnstoy]

Great link Leo... The various product specific examples are excellent. Thanks for the link.

[Grentz]

Thanks for the tips guys. I got a bit better result by lighting from below and using a dark posterboard...but probably my main issue is that I dont have a good lightbox or lights for that matter.

Here are some of the better ones, no PP either, just straight out of my 30D (still not great, but should work for eBay :p )
1
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7932/Image31.jpg
2
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7829/Image38.jpg
3
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7293/Image42.jpg
4
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/8434/Image45.jpg

I can tell I need to difuse the lights more (you can see the reflection of them in the glass), but my lights are not bright enough to get through even tissue paper without getting pretty dark...so I probably need some new brighter lights as my next purchase.