Halogen 500W worklight ??

Hello, I am a beginner and I want to photograph the violins, violas,

and Cellos that I make. I know from looking at proffesional photos

of instruments that I will need to eliminate all shadows totally,

and also not overheat the subject at all. I am looking for a

proffesional product type of shoot, not a B/W arty farty grainy

mess. I thought I could blast the studio with light from two Halogen

500W worklights, perhaps using shower curtains as flters. Any ideas?

Thankyou very much indeed.

Getting totally shadowless lighting is easy enough with large scrims, and shower curtains will be OK for this - but he results will be pretty boring.

Halogen worklights, filtered to achieve the correct colour (if shooting on film) will produce enough light with long-ish exposures but you mention the need not to overheat the subject. If you are talking about physical heat, i.e. high temperature, this will be a problem - these lights produce far more heat than light!

Hi Garry, thanks for the response, yes I see that the heat would be a problem for a long shoot, but I only need a few shots to nail a violin, I hope! You mentioned 'Scrims', I have never heard of them, I will find out. I'd prefer a less boring shoot, but this has to be all about product basics rather than arty whims. the colour and even shadowless light beng the most important part, I will use film.

Scrims sound cool though, any ideas are greatly appreciated.

Cheers mate.

Ben,

Don't underestimate the length of time it takes to set up shots that seem simple! It high temperature is a problem you will need to take care.

Scrims are simply diffusers placed in front of a light, they can achieve a very wide range of different effects. Their use has been covered in some of the regular lighting themes, archived under 'Administration' in this forum

Ok Garry,

I will be very careful and read all the admin. stuff too.

I need to flatter the subject (violin) by whatever means possible.

Colour shifts are a major concern for me, I have no experience.

I am aware of the perspective correction needed and so I will be

getting into large format. Perhaps I will make a few mistakes

before I am happy with the lighting. I will try Halogen sometime though!

Many thanks.

There is a product called Heat Shield that you could put in front of the light. It won't

completely eliminate the heat, but it will reduce it a great deal. The other thing you could

do, and this is done on alot of tabletop commercials is to put the lights on a dimmer. You

can dial down the light level while you are setting them so that not much heat is being

produced,then when you are ready to shoot, bring the lights up full. Just make sure you

dim them between shooting. To soften the light try using some white ripstop nylon.

Shower curtain might not be dense enough to create shadowless light.

If you decide to use the worklites - be sure to buy tungsten balanced film, or you will

certainly get color shifting.

You might look into getting daylight balanced flourescent lights as an alternative...without

heat. :)

Hi Peter and Will, thanks for the replies. 500W Halogen Worklights are obviolusly not gonna be a good idea for my shoot, too hot and

probably too bright. I think that four smaller separate lights with filters would give a shadowless look and not give colour shifts.

I don't want to invest too heavilly in specialist lighting, but perhaps I could also use the photography lights for other work purposes too. I am interested in the daylight balanced flourescent lights, also for general workshop lighting. In fact I want to use

Ultra violet tubes for ageing (turns light brown) the wood of the violins I make, and so having the option of using ultra violet for photography would be an interesting arty option! Anyone ever tried industrial grade U.V. lights,sunscreen, and goggles for photography??

Cheers and special thanks to Gary Edwards for his excellent Admin. work.

Hi Ben,

First, I'm in awe of anyone who can make a violin.

Second, I'm part of the music scene here, and as such, I've photographed quite a few

string instruments for authentication purpoases, so I think I can help you. Usually what I

have been asked for is a dead on straight shot of the back, the front, and the sides, plus

some details of the scroll work, bridge area including f holes, and so on. So I'm assuming

that's what you need too.

The halogen 500W worklights: The only difficulty here is that they may not be

manufactured with a lot of attenttion payed to their color temperature, but wioth type B

film, you ought to come out pretty close. You may want to do some tests though, and then

you can correct the next time you shoot with CC (color correction) filters. They're

inexpensive geletin filters that you attach, usually just with tape, to the front of the lens.

With them, you can shift the color 5 or 10 points or more towards red, yellow, blue,

whatever. I think the worklights you're talking about would be in range. If you do want to

invest, I suggest a couple Lowell Tota-lights. 1000W. I've had mine for decades, and

they're very good.

"Not overheat the subject 'at all.'" What are you really worried about here? Violins and

violinists regularly put their instruments through normal room temperature variations

without damage, say 60 degree F to 90 or even 95 f. The lights you're talking about may

warm up the ambient air of your working space, but unless you're affecting the

instrument with radient heat, (having the lights shine direcktly on the instruments from

less than

two feet or so), I don't see the issue. Maybe there is something about new instruments and

the

varnish that I don't understand.

In one of your posts above, I think you mention getting four lights. I don't think you need

them. What you need to do is spread out the light you do have with a scrim which you can

build very cheaply. If you can build a violin, you can handle this. Out of 1X2 make a square

wooden frame about 3'X6'. Join the corners with those L braces you can get at a hardware.

Then-I'm sorry, I don't know the name of the product-get a translucent material meant for

scrims. Just go to a professional photo supply house, describe what you're building, and

they should know what you need. It comes in 48" rolls X however many feet you need.

Attach this scrim material to the frame in any way you can-tape, staples, whatever.

You also may need a large reflecting panel. Same idea, except attach white seamless rather

than the scrim material.

About rigging all this stuff up: I would work on a wall rather than the floor, mainly because

it's nearly impossible to get a camera directly over the vioin, if it's on the floor. So if you

have a white wall that you can drive a nail in, you're all set. Otherwise, tape or attach

somehow a large piece of the white seamless to the wall. Hang the violin by a nail with

some of that invisable fish wire. The nail crops out, of course, and fish line may show a

little bit, but it's a small price. Hang it at a height that is comfortable for you to work.

Rigging the scrim and reflecting cards is more difficult, as you have to stand them on end

perhaps 3 or 4 feet off the ground. It will be awkward. Do you have some clamps? You can

clamp them to

chair backs, stepladders, whatever. I'm sure in your shop you've got enough stuff to do it

with. Anyway, figure out a way to place the scrim close to the camera on either the left or

right, and about 3 or 4 feet from the violin. using your ad lib rigging. Then position the

worklight about 2 or 3 feet behind that, and shine the light through the scrim onto the

violin.

That's your basic light. The highlight will roughly correlate with the size and shape of the

scrim, so You should have a nice, long, soft, spread out highlight that gives

shape and dimension to the violin, but there may be a shadow along the opposite side of

the violin from the light, which will probably be a little too heavy, even for me, one of your

"arty farty grainy mess" types. Two ways around this.

First way: place another light and scrim on the opposite side of the camera. This will give

you a similar highlight on the other half of the violin, and I'm sure you'll like it. It will also

leave you with two very faint shadows, one on each side of the violin. It will be as close to

shadowless as you can get it, though.

Second way: Bring the reflector panel, perpendiular to the wall, up close to the vioin. This

will catch some of the llight and refelct it back into that shadow, but nowhere near enough

to eliminate the shadow. This would be my way of doing it, but then I'm one of those arty

farty types.

Then shoot it. Move in and do the details.Turn it over, and shoot the other side. For the

sides, you'll have to figure

out a way to hang the violin a little further out from the wall.

For the cello, if you have made the scrim as large a 3'X6', you ought to be able to use the

same setup. You'll just need a heavier weight of fish line.

Hope this helps. I'll check in on this thread a few times over the next few days if you have

any questions.

Best

Tom

Hi Tom,

I just wrote a very long reply to you, and then lost it!

I am sure if I were a computer geek I could find a way around it,

but I am a hands-on analogue guy. Anyhow here is the second effort.

Thanks for the very long reply to my question, I think that I will

invest and buy into the lighting systems you describe, and also to educate myself about the staggering quantities of various emulsions. Ultimately I want to do Large Format 1:1 macro photography of my violins as well as the more basic authentification/documentation style shoots. I read that L.F. requires large lights and plenty of it. I want a L.F. camera for the movements and resolution.... I currently shoot a Nikon F4s and a Fujica G690BL Most folks who shoot violins use 35mm and a short telephoto. I will save for the various specialist Nikkors I want, 120 Medical Nikkor, 85 PC, etc.

I need to get some experience, looks like I'm starting at the deep end!! I will be shooting a Strad. in London soon, for purposes of making an exact copy of the violin, for a client. I wish I could afford a Canon 1ds mk.2 for that kind of opportunity. However, my client is also a very good friend, so I can set up a proper shoot in his home, and take my time with the Strad. I will be extremely careful about the shoot, and I will follow your excellent advice. I will prepare for the shoot well and burn film. How much would you charge for that? ??

For my own studio purposes I will experiment and try new things.

I realise that photography is about light, not cameras, so Halogen or not, I will find a way, if there's a will.

Thanks again and all the best, Ben.

Ben,

I think that Tom has made some very good points. My personal feeling is that 2 lights should be enough, extra fill if needed can be produced using white reflectors, which don't cast shadows.

Fluorescent lights? No personal experience, but I have doubts about colour accuracy simply because they do not produce a complete spectrum of colour, and in any event the light output is low. Very Low.

Halogen worklights? Well, as I said originally, not ideal but as you are only looking for very diffused light, they should do the job for you. The colour consistency should not be a problem and you can either use Tungsten film, possibly with colour balancing filters, or daylight film with a colour correction filter + colour balancing filters if necessary. To get soft, shadowless lighting the lights, or at least the scrims, will need to be very close indeed to the subject.

You mention the need for brighter lights if using large format. This is true in that, typically, you might use f45 or f64 with large format against f32 with medium format, so you would need x2 or x4 the power - but your violins won't have any problem with keeping still and so you can simply use longer exposures. Recipocity failure can kick in, but only at fairly long exposures using daylight film. If tungsten-balanced film is used then much longer exposures can normally be used.

Lighting is normally just a mixture of common sense and care, so don't allow yourself to be intimidated by the technicalities!

Please post some examples when you have them.

Garry,

I will try what you say about lighting, and I will post what I can when I can. I am running behind schedule and in no rush !!

Ben.

Hi, I found a useful link about lighting, which suits my purposes precisely. The methods outlined look fairly simple and effective.

http://www.beares.com/pdf/photography.pdf

Cheers.

Hi again, here is an even better link, hope it is of some interest!!

http://www.soundpostonline.com/archive/winter2001/page1.htm

Ben.

I had almost the same idea as you. I purchased the all one one set of two 500W halgens thinking it would work out for portrait lighting. It was ok....

You'd think 1000w total would be enough to give you almost daylight... but it doesn't quite cut it. Not compared to what a single low powered $60 hotshoe flash can acheive.

The both lights dead on the subject I could get maybe 1/60 , f5.6 at iso200 .. which is pretty crappy considering I'm blasting them with hot light. I tried diffusing it through some thick paper.. but it wasn't bright enough for me to shoot the subject.. Once you start getting in the shutter speed area of 1/30.. the subjects tiny movements will hurt the quality of your sharpness.

And although you could drop to f2.8... a DOF that shallow really doesn't work well for portraits.

Instead I got two vivitar flashes and an umbrella, and slave "peanuts" to trigger them from my on-camera flash. With that setup I can get f16 shots at iso100 if I wanted to!

I usually how to power the flashes down.. so I can get a nice f8 or f11

Hi, I have realised like you that blasting a huge light source will not suit my needs. Instead I will be stopping down considerably, longer exposure, and using 4 smaller light sources at close range.

By using a stand in prop, to practice with, and by keeping the lights off or low until the shoot, I think heat will not pose a problem for my delicate subject. Sometimes the subtle 'arty farty' lighting may be more effective too!! I find some of the huge product billboard shots a bit over the top. Something else I have been considering is to use comparative lighting, to do two shoots, so I can see the differences between daylight and the studio shoot.

Once again thanks to all.