Garry Edwards
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First things first – my apologies for not being able to post a challenge in August – harvest time at the farm has to take priority – and my delay in posting this month – don’t ask
The challenge for this month is darkfield lighting, which is basically the opposite of our first challenge, brightfield lighting, see https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/lighting-challenge-1-coffee-cup.759315/
So, I’ve used a softbox as my light source, which is fine. But if you don’t have one then you can bounce light from a white wall instead, which will work just as well, or you could use a window, or as with the brightfield lighting challenge, a white computer screen - pretty much anything will do the job, so nobody is excluded
.
Here’s the first setup shot, taken from just behind the camera.
The softbox (OK, folding beauty dish/softbox) has a pair of my suit trousers draped over it to stop the light where it needs to be stopped. Cinefoil/blackwrap would be a better choice, but trousers work too
Then there’s a small stool. That should really have been covered by blackwrap too, but I used a black tee-shirt instead. To completely avoid showing the uneven texture, the camera height was almost exactly in line with the base of the subject, not ideal but OK for the purpose (I hope)
Darkfield lighting is a very useful technique, normally used for transparent or translucent subjects as shown here, but also useful with opaque subjects too, if additional lights can be used as well. Basically, all of the light comes from each side, above and sometimes below, and the effect is dependent on the size of the masked (black) area, the size of the white area, the distance from the light source to the subject and the shape of the subject, so it can get a bit complicated, but can be very finely controlled. I could explain the physics but I won’t - just experiment until you’re happy!
So, here’s my actual bottle of aftershave, which of course I should have cleaned thoroughly but didn’t
It has a strange mixture of both concave and convex surfaces, each of which create strange and often unwanted refraction, one of the disadvantages of the darkfield process. So, someone who was clearly hinting gave me this one at Xmas, different shape, different refraction.
Each bottle has some annoying writing that shows through
This is common, but is usually printed on to a label that needs to be removed before the photography, but in this case nothing could be done because the writing is engraved on to the reverse of the bottle.
Back to the setup, and I’ve included this one basically to emphasise the need for a decent lens hood, with the light coming straight at the camera lens
So, I think that this is a useful tool for us all to have in our toolkit, and following the “rules” that I set for these challenges, there’s just a single light, no editing except cropping and with minimal space and equipment needed.
But we CAN do more, for example we cant take great care with distance, masking, maybe even adding a matt box to the lens for greater control, and we can also add extra lighting, as below:
To stay within both the rules and the spirit, the shot above doesn't actually have any extra lighting, but you may have noticed that my camera was on a small tripod, this allowed me to introduce ambient light simply by using a much longer shutter speed.
Over to you, I know that you can do much better . . .
The challenge for this month is darkfield lighting, which is basically the opposite of our first challenge, brightfield lighting, see https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/lighting-challenge-1-coffee-cup.759315/
So, I’ve used a softbox as my light source, which is fine. But if you don’t have one then you can bounce light from a white wall instead, which will work just as well, or you could use a window, or as with the brightfield lighting challenge, a white computer screen - pretty much anything will do the job, so nobody is excluded
.Here’s the first setup shot, taken from just behind the camera.
The softbox (OK, folding beauty dish/softbox) has a pair of my suit trousers draped over it to stop the light where it needs to be stopped. Cinefoil/blackwrap would be a better choice, but trousers work too
Then there’s a small stool. That should really have been covered by blackwrap too, but I used a black tee-shirt instead. To completely avoid showing the uneven texture, the camera height was almost exactly in line with the base of the subject, not ideal but OK for the purpose (I hope)
Darkfield lighting is a very useful technique, normally used for transparent or translucent subjects as shown here, but also useful with opaque subjects too, if additional lights can be used as well. Basically, all of the light comes from each side, above and sometimes below, and the effect is dependent on the size of the masked (black) area, the size of the white area, the distance from the light source to the subject and the shape of the subject, so it can get a bit complicated, but can be very finely controlled. I could explain the physics but I won’t - just experiment until you’re happy!
So, here’s my actual bottle of aftershave, which of course I should have cleaned thoroughly but didn’t
It has a strange mixture of both concave and convex surfaces, each of which create strange and often unwanted refraction, one of the disadvantages of the darkfield process. So, someone who was clearly hinting gave me this one at Xmas, different shape, different refraction.
Each bottle has some annoying writing that shows through
This is common, but is usually printed on to a label that needs to be removed before the photography, but in this case nothing could be done because the writing is engraved on to the reverse of the bottle.
Back to the setup, and I’ve included this one basically to emphasise the need for a decent lens hood, with the light coming straight at the camera lens
So, I think that this is a useful tool for us all to have in our toolkit, and following the “rules” that I set for these challenges, there’s just a single light, no editing except cropping and with minimal space and equipment needed.
But we CAN do more, for example we cant take great care with distance, masking, maybe even adding a matt box to the lens for greater control, and we can also add extra lighting, as below:
To stay within both the rules and the spirit, the shot above doesn't actually have any extra lighting, but you may have noticed that my camera was on a small tripod, this allowed me to introduce ambient light simply by using a much longer shutter speed.
Over to you, I know that you can do much better . . .
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