Lighting Glass & Shiny Object

[Juanch]

Hi Guys,

Need some tips on lighting glass & shiny objects. Yesterday, I bought a red fighting fish and decided to use it as a subject to try out some shots. I placed the fish in a glass goblet & took some snaps but I kept on getting glare & reflections despite several adjustments in the set-up and settings.

Appreciate your suggestions & tips.. =)

The set-up: a remotely triggered SB-800 above the goblet, a DIY diffuser between the SB-800 & goblet, white photo paper under a glass & as backdrop.



After about a hundred snaps, only got one "acceptable" photo but it still had some reflection on the side & glare at the bottom.

[ttosifa]

The best answer is that you should buy the book "Light: Science and Magic" (LSM) to learn how to light shiny stuff. Any answer shorter than that book will be incomplete!

There are several issues in what you are trying to do. The reflections on the sides of the glass are most likely the bits of the cutting board (?) behind your background photo paper. Your glass will reflect EVERYTHING. LSM shows how to make this feature useful by using black cardboard to define the edges of the glass. It's hard to say what's causing the reflections at the bottom, but my suspicion is that it is a reflection of the photopaper which is in turn directly reflecting your speedlight.

A commercial photographer once told me that pictures of anything that you can see yourself in are the hardest to take.

[OsmosisStudios]

The reflections on the sides are of the exposed wood: you just need to correct that bit . The bottom reflections are because you have the glass on a pane of glass as well as the white paper.

My product photography rig (which I should probably dig out of somewhere) was made with 2 pieces of rectangular (2:3) paper, placed like a T. The top sheet forms the base and rear panel, the lower sheet forms the sides. i have another one that has a section of where the sheets meet cut out of the top sheet to give me a bit more bend in the side sheets, but I rarely find that to be an issue.

[carl yeomans]

What ttosifa said, you will have you eyes and mind opened reading that book. You will learn the family of angles and the bright&dark field lighting of glass, no more guessing where to put the light source.
Carl.

[Juanch]

Thank you all for your feedback... did some research at Lighting Glass and I'm beginning to understand the characteristics of glass... will also get the book from amazon.com as you have suggested. This is really very interesting & challenging.