Product Photography Lighting

[JustineLouise]

Hello

I'm doing a shoot with some fashion students at my university tomorrow that involves bread and jewellery (don't ask) and I'm just after some advice really on a lighting set up for jewellery and how to avoid light bouncing off the jewellery etc.

Any help would be appreciated

J

 

[Garry Edwards]

You'll need to help a bit before anyone else can...

Give us some sort of clue what you plan to do with the bread and jewellery, and what type of jewellery it is.
What type of background do you want to use?
What do you have in the way of equipment?

 

[JustineLouise]

You'll need to help a bit before anyone else can...

Give us some sort of clue what you plan to do with the bread and jewellery, and what type of jewellery it is.
What type of background do you want to use?
What do you have in the way of equipment?

Well the fashion students plan on putting the jewellery on the bread, so on french sticks etc, and then using loads hollowed out with jewellery inside etc.
We are just using a plain white background, they did want marble but their tutor has said plain, and as far as equipment goes we have access to all the latest bowens lighting and accessories in our university studios.

 

[Garry Edwards]

OK, that helps.

Basically you need a fairly soft overhead fill, raked forwards to put the light on the top and slightly behind, but not on any vertical surface. This photo

shows a typical lighting arrangement using a boom arm, which is pretty much essential

Then you need to light the bread, to reveal it's texture. A tight honeycomb placed as far away as possible at an oblique angle will do that nicely. The further away the better, to prevent unwanted light fall off. The same technique can be used to light the jewellery, depending on what it is you might need to combine hard and soft light - this simply means using a large diffused light source such as a softbox, which a small, hard light immediately in front of it, set at whatever higher level of energy does the job for you.

After that, it's just mirrors and reflectors to create light in areas as needed. Lights can do the same job but mirrors/reflectors are easier and take up less space.

Hang on, it didn't work when I put the photo in so use this link and look at the pic showing the boom arm over the product shooting table