Product photography with shiny items for begginers

<p>Hi All,<br>

I dont have much experience in photography but I am currently developing a new ecommerce store for <a href="http://tivelasipottery.com/" target="_blank">h</a>andmade <a href="http://tivelasipottery.com/collections/teapots">ceramic teapots</a> and other pottery items and some of the are really shine and hard to photo... My mission was to picture all of the items in the website. I am using Panasonic GX7 with the stock lens. I am taking the pictures in light tent. I will be very happy if someone can provide feedback what I can do to change the image quality. I am not very good in manual shoot and so much factors like - exposure, light, ISO, F and many more. I am pretty sure that the camera is much more capable to make a better pictures. It is just that I am not a photographer and dont have much experience with the cameras. Hiring a photographer is not an option because we should take a thousands of pictures and our finance budged is very limited.<br>

Thank you in advance!</p><div></div>

<p>this is pretty much the 'bible'..........</p>

<p>http://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Magic-Introduction-Photographic/dp/0240812255</p>

<p>Shiny objects with high reflectivity are always a challenge, even for very experienced photographers. You could try decreasing the intensity of of the lighting coming from the direction of highest reflectivity to provide better color definition, and likewise a polarizing filter may provide some relief.</p>

<p>Whether you buy a 328-page book or not, a circular polarising filter is going to be vital. This is easy to use and you can quickly see that you can suppress different highlights by turning the front part. You will seldom suppress all the reflections with dome-shaped objects, nor should you even want to, since these help define the shape of the object, but the reflections in your sample pic are rather too large. Understand that your camera is going to choose somewhat different exposures with different ratios of subject to background - to be sure of getting whole series of pictures with a constant background tone (anything else looks messy!) you should use manual metering and spot-meter a gray card placed temporarily in the middle of the picture. You will probably find the best results will be with a very light tone showing in the background (zone IX if you ever get around to using the Zone System), so working from your spot meter measurement apply a exposure correction until you get this. Above all do NOT think that you can snap away and fix it all later in Photoshop - use of a polariser and correct metering at the taking stage is better, quicker and indeed easier!</p>

<p>There are also the basics... use a tripod and cable release or self timer.<br>

I'm guessing that color accuracy is also a concern so you might want to take a shot of a color card as well after the gray card.<br>

Polarization of the light source in combination with camera's polarizing fiter is also very helpful. I received this in my e-mail just yesterday...<br>

http://www.edmundoptics.com/resources/application-notes/illumination/successful-light-polarization-techniques/<br>

Polarizing film is readily available from the big suppliers. Good luck.</p>

Your light tent is the primary glare producing culprit here. It is basic physics at work: the larger and closer the light

source is to a very reflective surface, the larger the area is that will reflect light towards the camera. (Angles of incidence

= angles of reflections).

 

What you need are smaller sources of light, but that comes at a price as well, namely harsher light and darker shadow

values.

 

A possible but viable solution: use a light above the objects and surround the objects with large white panels. By

surround, I am including across the front of the set as well as the sides. If you put a solid panel across tje front of the set,

how do you photograph the objects? You cheat by cutting a hole in the front panel to poke the lens through!

 

This may not completely solve your problem but it will solve the big issue of glare from the sides. Experiment with different

sizes of your top light from a single naked bulb - at different heights and positions above the set, to an evenly diffuse

translucent light. You should also try with a weaker, more gauze like diffusion material and the light at different heights

and positions above that.

<p>If pola filter doesn't quite work out, try using dulling spray (or matt) on the shiny parts.</p>

<p>Les</p>

Buy the book. It covers exactly the information you seek, and it explains the science behind it.

<p>I also suggest you read this PN Lighting Themes thread from 2004 where Brooks Short explains how to use specular highlights to show shape and texture.<br>

http://www.photo.net/photography-lighting-equipment-techniques-forum/007tNJ</p>