how to light and/or photograph clear objects

Hey,

 

any ideas on how to light and/or successfully photograph clear, small objects?

 

please advise.

 

best,

 

g.

Can you be more specific please?

Traditionally, clear or reflective objects are photographed with broad sources, soft light. Tone of the background is not critical however the separation in tone of the object and the background is critical to the object appearing clearly.

In school assignments at Art Center College of Design we were assigned photos of wine glasses on both dark and light backgrounds. we used soft boxes or diffusion panels as the main source and a large reflector on the other. numerous smaller reflector cards were manipulated in position to define the edges of the glass.

carefully light the edges as well as the background.

here's a big hint--light it with reflections...

Run, don't walk to your public library and check out the books on product lgihting, or any book on lighting.<p>Barring that, find, buy or build a table with a glass top.<br>*<i>Cheapest is two saw horses with a small sheet of plexiglas.</i><p>Find, buy or build an all-black/blue/dark U or box-shaped enclosure to surround the product on three sides.<br>Find or buy a cheap clamp-on light you can use to shine up through the glass/plexiglas to light the object from beneath.<br>Make sure the room lights are out, take an ambient reading, set-up the shot then shoot.<br>*<i>Different effects can be had with different colored bulbs or gels.</i><p>Keep reading your library books.

"Oooops" I only pasted the first draft!<p>

 

To continue: if you want to light small object from above, and if you're using digital capture, the same basic setup can be used without lighting the product from below. Using the same cheap clamp-on lights, position them so one light is off to one side of the camera, another positioned so there is an illusion of depth in your LCD, take reading then shoot.<bR>*<i>I do not dismiss shooting upwards through a sheet of glass/Plexiglas, especially if that would not be cost effective for you, but clear objects <b>properly lit</b> from below have a certain visual cache (Read "<b>Professional</b> cache") just lighting them from the top doesn't have</i>. <p>Using top and bottom lighting on clear subjects is of course more painstaking in order to achieve the best looking results but gives an even more professional lighting effect.