Cheap product shot flash "studio" advice

Garry Edwards said:
My lighting arrangement is fully explained in the blog entry.There are some major differences between the way I did it an the way that you've done it.
Firstly, my product base was a piece of 'black glass', a smoked glass table top, this produced a reflection of the subject, and apart from the difference in the visual effect, following the principle that the angle of reflectance equals the angle of incidence, the light from the overhead softbox bounced off of the glass at the same angle as the angle at which it struck, which means that it didn't light it.

Secondly, my camera height was much, much lower. You're looking down from above, which has created perspective distortion and also an out of focus area. But it has affected the amount of light visible on your product base too, because it's showing much more of it, due to the higher camera angle.

So, your background isn't really a background at all, it's a product base. My background is a white wall behind the subject, it doesn't show as white because no light is reaching it. This allows for the background to be lit separately (if required) as in this shot

Where a blue gel over a second light has added the background light.
The shutter speed isn't relevant. All that you need to do is to make sure that no light reaches the background (which isn't possible when the background is in fact the product base) or to use a background/product base that either reflects almost no light at all (black velvet) or which reflects a lot of light (glass) but which reflects the light away from the lens.
That isn't relevant either, what matters is the ratio of light (the amount of unwanted light that reaches somewhere it shouldn't) not the quantity of light. This is fixed and isn't related to the power setting of the light.

One thing that does baffle me with your shot though garry is how a reflection of the crease in the yellow pepper is visible in the reflection when the pepper is clearly positioned in the middle of the board?
Maybe im missing something but it doesn't seem possible
 
That was a piece of black acrylic sized a3, in hindsight i should have got a bigger piece as i found myself putting more effort into making sure the edge was out of shot than i liked.

Thats what I'm having to "suffer" at the moment as I'm having to be very careful with framing to ensure I don't go over the edges of the table mat I'm using.
 
James J said:
Thats what I'm having to "suffer" at the moment as I'm having to be very careful with framing to ensure I don't go over the edges of the table mat I'm using.

Yeah its like the saying, go big or go home lol
But now i have my methods down i should be able to scale up or down as required.
 
One thing that does baffle me with your shot though garry is how a reflection of the crease in the yellow pepper is visible in the reflection when the pepper is clearly positioned in the middle of the board?
Maybe im missing something but it doesn't seem possible
Well, if you look at the shot more closely you'll see that a small part of even the farthest away pepper is visible, due of course to the camera height, and the items nearest the edge are more visible, i.e. the stalks of the tomatoes are fully visible, so it would be strange if the 'crease' in the yellow paper wasn't visible.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Garry Edwards
Yes, acrylic is useful but it's by no means the only material that works - as Richard says, just find odds and ends, and as I said, use your imagination and experiment.

Unfortunately adding the background 'lighting' in PS as per your shot just doesn't work, it needs to be a genuine light to avoid looking fake.
Honestly! Tsk Gary, i thought you knew your stuff.
All you see here is pure honest light
Honestly! And if you can't work out how its done and have to revert to stabbing in the dark then im sorry but your wrong
Well, the more I look at it, the more fake it looks to me - sorry if I know less about lighting than you thought.
 
Dunno garry, just thought it would be obvious. Im not attacking you personally but for you to not guess but to tell me how my work is put together is wrong.
I had my doubts about your image of tomatoes and pepper and upon first inspection it looked fake and some sort of invert job but instead of just coming out with what i THOUGHT was your method i INQUIRED about it and now i am wiser for it.
I really don't know if i should take your "fake" comment as an insult or a compliment.
 
Taken some advice on board and I'm now getting results that I'm quite happy with. I still need to change the base as the pattern on it is distracting, however this is the only partially reflective material we seem to have in the entire house lol. I've not added water or oil to boost the reflection, instead it was just down to technique to try and get the most out of the subject along with the reflection.


Pen Lids 2 by jjohnson2012, on Flickr

Critique most welcome :)

(framing is intentionally tight btw!)
 
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