Lighting this is driving me insane! HELP!

Ok, I have this bottle of wine. It's called ChocoVine. The text of ChocoVine is a gold metallic lettering. No matter how I try to light this the text goes black unless it's directly in the reflection of the umbrella or reflector. Just for poops and tittles I blasted it with straight on flash and it still went black.

I tried putting a reflector on either side and got a better result, but still not favorable. Even searching for it on Google image, it looks like I'm not the only one that had trouble lighting this...which makes me feel a touch better, but I still want to nail this...it's kind of personal now...

Any suggestions?

Please note that this image is to demo the problem at hand. I know the comp sucks

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Get a copy of Light: Science and Magic. This is the sort of shot it was written for.

http://www.amazon.com …67&ref=pd_sl_62​ods5eqp5_e

+1 I picked it up a few months ago and have read through it a couple of times but haven't been able to apply it yet. It has a whole section on lighting glass/bottles.

Awesome, I may pick it up. I have NEVER wasted this many shots trying to get something right. I may have to send my camera in to have the shutter replaced after this!

+2 was going to suggest the same thing! Lighting a wine bottle is one of the trickest things out there that people commonly run into it seems! lol

How about gettn some white foamcoor, or card stock.. cut a hole for the lens and shoot through the hole. If you're tryn to get reflected light on the bottle, light reflects in right angles, except for the part of the label that is directly in front of the camera.

This thread has several good examples of lighting wine bottles. Might be worth a look...

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=281524

alabama1980 wrote in post #11843018
Awesome, I may pick it up. I have NEVER wasted this many shots trying to get something right. I may have to send my camera in to have the shutter replaced after this!

Wasted shots? Bah. Every shot should be a learning experience.

First idea that pops into my noggin would be a pair of lights, preferably strip banks, at 45 degrees to each side, from the front, of the bottle?

Alternatively, what about angling a single light up, at an angle, from below?

Angle of incidence is your friend. Cut a couple of pieces of white paper or foam core and place them to reflect into the camera lens from the gold lettering. By making them relatively small and horizontal their reflections will be confined to the area you need to lighten.

Hold in place with bent wire and little weights.

Its not uncommon to have several small mirrors, reflectors and gobos around a set piece like this to get the light where you want it and keep it away from other places.

dmward wrote in post #11843116
Angle of incidence is your friend. Cut a couple of pieces of white paper or foam core and place them to reflect into the camera lens from the gold lettering. By making them relatively small and horizontal their reflections will be confined to the area you need to lighten.

Hold in place with bent wire and little weights.

Its not uncommon to have several small mirrors, reflectors and gobos around a set piece like this to get the light where you want it and keep it away from other places.

That's a good idea, David. However, the reflector isn't going to be relatively small. It's going to be relatively much larger than label you want to illuminate. That's because the surface of the bottle is curved. So, the further the reflector is from the bottle, the wider the reflector will need to be to cover the entire label.

You're right Leo,
I guess I was thinking small relative to a 36" disk reflector. Also, if the reflector is close to the bottle it doesn't have to be very big Just big enough to deliver the goods where needed on the label. Based on the test shot, I suspect something around 5x7 might get the job done. Providing its within a foot or less of the bottle.

Here is a page that has some interesting images showing how they used small reflectors, gobos etc. Also, I think the big Octas without diffusion panels would be a nice light source.

Also, liked the use of patterned fabric to mottle and color the light.

I should try shooting one since it doesn't sound all that different from my shooting. I'd put my softboxes right up to the bottle at maybe 70 degrees, put a reflector under the lens and one above it (between the modifiers) while tilting them to see which angle reflects the light the best. There are a ton of things more that you could do with adding more reflectors as probably the most important.

dmward wrote in post #11843748
You're right Leo,
I guess I was thinking small relative to a 36" disk reflector. Also, if the reflector is close to the bottle it doesn't have to be very big Just big enough to deliver the goods where needed on the label. Based on the test shot, I suspect something around 5x7 might get the job done. Providing its within a foot or less of the bottle.

Here is a page that has some interesting images showing how they used small reflectors, gobos etc. Also, I think the big Octas without diffusion panels would be a nice light source.

Also, liked the use of patterned fabric to mottle and color the light.

Here's a test shot I did half an hour ago. Both bottles were lit with an Eli RX600 + Speedotron 22" BD (because it just happened to be there) through a double layered diffusion panel above the bottle. There were also two diffusion panels to the side and behind the bottle to provide the side highlighting on the bottle.

For the bottle on the right, I placed a 20" x 51" stripbox (unlit) directly in front of and below the bottle so provide the highlighting for the label. I purposely positioned the stripbox so that its reflection would be visible on the bottle above the label just to give you an idea how small that 51" width of the box becomes on the bottle. As you can see, the box is only lighting the middle third of the label. I'm sure two more of the 20" x 51" stripboxes would do the trick.

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Now you see why I place my lights so close Leo. haha. I don't own (hope to next year) a 7 ft modifier or I could just use large paper or fabric instead.