Still life / product shot - what reflective base?
- Thread starter mercurius
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Perspex is pretty fail safe, and not expensive.
Garry Edwards
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Perspex is a trade name of acrylic. It's very efficient, but often too efficient for the purpose, and often produces a near mirror-like reflection, much stronger than what's required..
Floor tiles are usually much better, and so is glass. Black glass is used for black reflections of course.
The strength of the reflection is dependant very largely on the camera height, but also on the subject being photographed and the lighting, so there are a lot of variables that make consistency fairly difficult.
Because of this, most of us just add reflections in PP - it's quick, easy and produces exactly the result wanted.
Floor tiles are usually much better, and so is glass. Black glass is used for black reflections of course.
The strength of the reflection is dependant very largely on the camera height, but also on the subject being photographed and the lighting, so there are a lot of variables that make consistency fairly difficult.
Because of this, most of us just add reflections in PP - it's quick, easy and produces exactly the result wanted.
Thanks Charlotte. Do you find it scratches easily?
Good thought James, thanks for that. I will have to investigate floor tiles.Perspex is not bad,but i found it scrapes quite easy,i bought 1 black ceramic tile & 1 white one from B & Q,works fine.
Many thanks Garry.
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Not if you don't mistreat it.
You will easily get a gloss black polished porcelain tile from any proper tile shop for nothing. They invariable have old samples that are a pain to dump, so will give them to you gladly. Just be carefull that it is a good black though, there are some very wierd pigments in these floor tiles and these can mess with your colours. You may find the floor tile option is better than glass as they are fully opaque and the shine is right at the surface, not within a thickness of coloured glass or whatever.
Chris Haye
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In my day to day work I use acrylic sheet from a plastics supplier, but it can be found easily on ebay and the like. Acrylic produces deep, high sheen reflections that look great when lit correctly. They do pick up scratches easily if not treated with care and I find myself replacing the sheets fairly frequently for this reason. The cost however is very low, so it's not a big deal.
Tiles work ok, but are very small... glass is advocated by some, but it produces a reflection on both the top and bottom surface, which looks pretty sloppy to my eyes.
I'd have to disagree slightly with the comment about adding reflections in post production, it really depends on the type of work you are doing. Sometimes it is unavoidable, for example if you need to light the object from below, or with transparent objects that need to "glow" (bottles and the like), but in my experience where possible I would rather get it right in camera. For product work, I can see PP reflection being the most cost effective way of doing it, whereas for creative work I woudn't dream of it.
Tiles work ok, but are very small... glass is advocated by some, but it produces a reflection on both the top and bottom surface, which looks pretty sloppy to my eyes.
I'd have to disagree slightly with the comment about adding reflections in post production, it really depends on the type of work you are doing. Sometimes it is unavoidable, for example if you need to light the object from below, or with transparent objects that need to "glow" (bottles and the like), but in my experience where possible I would rather get it right in camera. For product work, I can see PP reflection being the most cost effective way of doing it, whereas for creative work I woudn't dream of it.
Garry Edwards
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Well, whether you disagree or not, even when it is easy to add reflections in camera, what is (generally) needed for commercial work is consistency, and the only way of achieving consistency in this is to also light everything consistently, AKA badly, and to also have identical camera height for each shot.
That, basically, is why even the people who know exactly how to create reflections in camera, don't.
That doesn't mean that I never do it in camera, I most certainly do - but not for commercial work.
That, basically, is why even the people who know exactly how to create reflections in camera, don't.
That doesn't mean that I never do it in camera, I most certainly do - but not for commercial work.
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We used to do most of our reflections in camera when I was shooting products commercially.
Some we didn't - mostly earrings because we only shot one of the pair anyway.
Chris Haye
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Back when I was assisting I can't say I found adding the reflection in post being particularly prevalent. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.