Help me improve my lighting!

I have kind of fallen into being the photographer at work. We build and run big experiments and they're difficult to photograph. Partly because of how they're made and partly because of the lack of space. I like to use strobes to limit distracting elements and also to keep any other IP sensitive stuff out of the shot. Most of these experiments are made of acrylic (plexiglass) and they usually make for glare city when you start putting lights on it. I usually rely on having the lights at an extreme angle (usually very high pointing down) to keep reflections out or I have the light really close and use the acrylic itself to diffuse the light.

Coming up with examples of this is difficult as most of the stuff we do is owned by the client, however I have a couple to share to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Hopefully I can get some tips or suggestions on lighting.

The first photo is our water channel. It is about 12m (40ft) long and about 2m wide and the glass section is about 1.5m off the ground. I only had a couple hours to cleanup and set this shot. I have 3 Elinchrom d-lite on the floor right up against the glass shooting into the channel (you can see the on the left) and one with me up on the platform about 10m in the air. The softboxes are the 2x2ft shallow ones. I used some really heavy grad filters in lightroom on the sides to cover up some of the othere experiments and distractions. I'm not sure what I could have done differently to take this photo besides using the ambient light with no flash. But I think it doesn't look very good because everything looks really flat and there are lots of reflections from the lights on the ceiling (which are off in this photo although the room is not dark).

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D-Lites in much larger modifiers will give you softer light, although less maneuverability. 7 foot OctoDomes would eliminate all the strong shadows in the tight areas of photo #2, and give nice reflections, but will cost quite a bit. Westcott 7 ft parabolic umbrellas are much less expensive to bounce and easy to set up and take down, but you will need to be careful with light spill so might want to add grids. They’re a bit overkill for your small subjects, so you might look at 6 ft umbrellas instead. Two will evenly wrap any subjects on table top if that’s what you seek. Then use your third strobe as a rim light or with a snoot to focus on detail. You’ll need to upgrade your stands, and rollers would help for convenience. Lastly, I suggest working on your white balance. The mixture of color temperature might be due to the experiments themselves, but you can correct some of it in-camera. Otherwise, you may want to gel your strobes to correct for the distracting source.

Greg, I suspect the apparent distortion in the last image could, at the very least, be reduced by pulling the camera back to at least twice the distance from the subject. You would probably want to use a longer focal length lens to retain the framing. Twice the distance requires twice the focal length to do this.

This mention of large sources that are alternatives to 2x2 softboxes, evokes my first reaction to OP comment about 'flat light'...

The sense of depth comes from both focus (DOF zone along with increasingly out-of-focus things) and by light (falloff of intensity), and by shadowing.
Our brains are simply wired that way.

Large sources that deprive us of shadowing, and which also do not fall off in intensity with distance, deprive us of TWO visual clues about depth. When every panel/contour is very evenly lit, that further deprives our brains of the clues to depth.

I find only shot #1 in OP to suffer from that characteristic. And maybe shot #3 is a touch lightweight on visual clues.

Large modifiers do not produce flat images when the light is properly feathered. The same principle applies in automotive photography and architectural interiors. Eliminating strong shadows means softening them of course, not removing shadows altogether. The goal is to obtain pleasing shadows, even with dramatic light, just as when lighting people. Typically, this means shadows must naturally fall down, not sideways and hard as seen in #2. That is awkward because it is unnatural. This is also the reason for using larger stands, especially booms, because positioning usually needs to be higher and more versatile. OP will not want to vary the depth of field if he wants to keep the overall subject in focus from front to back. f/8 to f/11 is good based on the scale and distance, similar to full and 3/4 studio shots of automobiles. Exceptions might be close-up detail shots where a shallow depth of field is desired.

Just my two cents, but what do I know?

Thanks NDAPhoto for the tips! I am going to try a 6-7ft softbox. There seem to be cheaper options in the $300 range from companies like impact and fotodiox. Although the westcott umbrellas are only about $100... I couldn't find any grids for umbrellas though. At least not that big... You're right about the white balance. I don't have colour calibrated monitors (and actually the two monitors I have are vastly different looking) so it's hard to tell sometimes. I tend to photograph on the cooler side... I think it looks more "sciency" haha. I usually want the floor to appear very white (even though it is more of an eggshell...?) but I probably went overboard on the coolness... this is more realistic to what it actually looks like.

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I do like your shift of color as a sciency effect with water and lasers. So long as it is intentional and you like it, great! Long ago, I worked on projects with factory robotics, large medical devices or even naval satellite dishes. Boring grays and beige! Adding colored gels for a cover shot or ad was the only way to make it eye catching. The engineers who normally care only about product specs would say hey, that’s cool! You’ve created a similar effect.

A Datacolor Spyder or similar monitor calibrator will take out the guesswork and keep you from pulling out your hair when you need to make sure viewed colors are optimal for everyone, or during printing.

There are definitely cheaper softboxes at the same sizes. The primary difference will be in durability and ease of set up. Light quality will often be impossible to tell any difference. The Fotodiox Ez-Pro (I’ve read) is pretty good. Grids are great and become important once you realize you need them. I think you are on the right track and glad you enjoy shooting in your lab with so many choices.

Edit: My first post wasn’t clear about grids. It sounded like using them with umbrellas, but I meant sticking with octas in order to add grids.