Reflections in Light Tent

Hi Wilt:
I understand completely what you are saying but your wine bottle picture that you took while attending a photography class has little in common with the subject or methods I discussed concerning Mac10’s vase. Your concept of adding that nice specular highlight is valid and useful and good. One could even put strips of black tape on your light source to suggest window panes. The problem is that it does not provide the necessary lighting to fully display the shape of the object and light it properly at the same time.

Your wine bottle has a nice specular highlight on it. I like that for sure but that is not what is showing us the bulk of the shape and form of the object. Adding those highlights can be done to dress the object up and it looks very nice but the only thing in your image that is showing the actual shapes of the bottle and stem ware is the fact that it is silhouetted against a bright patch on the background. Remove that, and all you have is a strip of bright specular highlight. That’s not going to separate the subject from it’s environment and properly light it at the same time and it would not likely please a commercial client. The label is being lit only by your narrow strip light so it goes totally black to the right edge and the bottle itself completely disappears into the dark table as does the base of the stem ware. This is not the best way to light this subject.

I love the silhouetted look of bottles and stemware but the vase we are talking about is not transparent and we are not using a bright patch on the background to show what the product looks like. It’s a different situation. It is opaque and a middle blue so the true tonality of the object must be shown.

In my illustration, I put the vase in front of a dark painted background but if you remember, Mac10 had it in front of black seamless. The vase needs to have it’s shape revealed and this is done with specular highlights tracing the edges and sides of the vase and very specifically both edges of the black handles so we can fully appreciate their shape.

I photographed a red vase very much like this many years ago for a pottery artist who was having an exhibition of his work and he needed the image for a mail out promo card. It was critical to him that the image be simple with a black background and show every curve of the vase along with an accurate rendition of it’s color. If I can find it, I will post it. I photographed it precisely as I have illustrated here and fully achieved the desired three dimensional look with soft controlled specular highlights. It would have been a failure had the highlights been bright white.

Again, I think you are assuming that my little quick illustration represents how the actual vase would look and that it would be nothing but solid white without showing the shape of the object. That could NOT be further from the truth. Let’s not make assumptions based on something like a little 5 minute illustration. It’s not a photograph.

The original image by Mac10 clearly shows his light sources in multiple locations caused by the curvature of the vase. This should be an obvious clue as to what will happen when we place our large panels on either side of the vase. The specular reflections will follow the curvature, become brighter and darker, narrower and wider and beautifully reveal the shape and because the light sources are wide and able to reach from the side and out toward the front as well, they will provide the necessary illumination to the front of the vase. This would truly come into play if this were a bottle with a label.

As a bonus, diffusion panels give us an option not available with a typical soft box. We can actually create gradients using panels by adjusting the placement of the light (or lights) as it falls upon the panel making specific areas chanage gradually from being lighter to darker. I did this on my image of a collectors knife called “The Dragon” to show the shape and form of the blade’s curvature more effectively. This technique makes the light source controllable to a huge degree. There are times when a solid mass of totally even light is called for and there are times when it’s not the best choice. I enjoy having a huge range of options.

One last item in the creativity department. Your image like my illustration, shows the specular highlights with defined sharp edges. This is normal and common to most images of this kind lit with soft boxes or diffusion panels but if one had an art director who didn’t want those edges to be sharp and defined (as I have experienced), it would be a simple task to make them soft and less defined.

The method would involve shifting from strobes to continuous lights. I have done this with nothing more than the modeling lights in my studio. One adjusts the lighting and selects an exposure combination to reflect the proper aperture for the desired depth of field combined with a shutter speed that will allow the shutter to remain open for 6 to 10 seconds or even longer. During these long exposures, the panels would be gently moved back and forth by several inches. Keeping them moving during the long exposure will blur the edges of the highlights making them softer as opposed to sharp and defined while the object remains beautifully lit and tack sharp. Again, we have a high degree of selective creative control.

Wilt, I will still respect you in the morning even though we may not be on the same page. My hope that others reading all this will try some of the techniques discussed (as PhotosGuy did) and post some examples of their efforts. After all, this is a place where people come to learn and I love watching people expand their knowledge base.

Best wishes,

Frank -

your black coffee cup is more cylindrical, which allows picking a camera angle that eliminates the camera reflection. The original poster's vase is more spherical, offering fewer choices of angle. That makes it much more difficult to eliminate the reflection of the camera.

Here's a round pottery piece, shot in a light tent (>>this tent<<) with diffuse lighting outside -- better, but the camera lens is still there, as a black blob.

I've thought of getting a tilt-shift lens for this kind of thing (I shoot a lot of pottery) -- that should allow you to get the camera lower and maybe move the reflection to a less noticeable spot on the reflective piece.

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lightingman wrote in post #2503746
Wilt, I will still respect you in the morning even though we may not be on the same page. My hope that others reading all this will try some of the techniques discussed (as PhotosGuy did) and post some examples of their efforts. After all, this is a place where people come to learn and I love watching people expand their knowledge base...Again, I think you are assuming that my little quick illustration represents how the actual vase would look and that it would be nothing but solid white without showing the shape of the object. That could NOT be further from the truth. Let’s not make assumptions based on something like a little 5 minute illustration. It’s not a photograph.
.

I think we BOTH are using 'quick illustrations' to illustrate an assortment of lighting concepts which are not used IN ISOLATION to portray any single objoct! That is why my first message said "to build upon" rather than "I diagree"! I was not assuming the final photo would look like the illustration, but that was a starting point, not the end.

Different objects require subtly different techniques, or MORE, to illustrate them well. And that is why companies pay half-day or day rates to hire photiographers, because it is seldom that a quick adjustment of a few lights results in a photo that the art director likes! And in providing this information to others on POTN, this point does need to be made, that there is NOT a single technique (like light tents) that works.

DavidEB wrote in post #2503801
Frank -

your black coffee cup is more cylindrical, which allows picking a camera angle that eliminates the camera reflection. The original poster's vase is more spherical, offering fewer choices of angle. That makes it much more difficult to eliminate the reflection of the camera.

Another technique to hide the camera is to put up a black screen with a hole in it that the lens can see thru.

HI Wilt
I think we are finally on the same page! Cool!
Have a great day.

I don't think so. you'd then have a reflection of the black screen. The problem here, as I see it, is that the light on the spherical reflecting object has to be as uniform as possible to prevent appearance of artificial edges.

True. It's the only dark, curved, & shiny object I could put my hands on in 1 minute or less.
Objective was not to illustrate detail on how to light his vase, but to suggest a couple of alternatives to Mac10's set-up.

That should be a help as an alternative to a view camera.
Cheap & quick solution to the converging parallels problem, if you can afford to throw away pixels, would be to use a very WA lens, rotate the cam to vertical , & keep the cam back absolutly vertical when you raise the cam, putting the object at the bottom of the shot. Something like this: [.]

With this sort of subject, I might try running the background paper out to the cam, raising the edge, & then putting a hole in it?

DavidEB wrote in post #2504236
I don't think so. you'd then have a reflection of the black screen. The problem here, as I see it, is that the light on the spherical reflecting object has to be as uniform as possible to prevent appearance of artificial edges.

Tjhe black screen technique works! It is employed by professionals. You only need to ensure that a small amount of light hits the screen and camera, and all will be black in the reflection!

Thank you all so much for your extensive replies. I think all of you put more effort
into your responses than I did in my whole setup. I really appreciate it.
I am technically a beginner in both photography and lighting although I've been a member
since '03. ( I have little spare time to spend on my hobby.)
At this point I am limited to the speedlights but it sounds like large diffusion
panels would be a good investment.
I am going to try all your suggestions as I am sure they will improve my results.
I will post a new picture of a hopefully well lit vase.

Thanks again,
Mac

So Mac10, how did this turn out for you?

I know this is an older thread but wow, this is definitely worthy of being bumped back up

Maybe spend a few hours in (THIS) thread

Lol. Kacey, I did precisely that (curiosity won out) and right afterwards, saw your post. Weird. I wanna see how Mac10 has been doing with this as progress is always fun to witness.

I have no idea if Mac will ever see this but I wanted to say for anyone else struggling with reflections that if it were me, I'd use a huge piece of black velvet that would cover the vase's FOV. The reason that'd be ok is because if you look at the areas that are clearly much darker, the blue is still going to be blue. It will not look like a patch of black if it's covered entirely. The diffusers on the sides and top should offer enough bounce for the front to not look underexposed.