Table top lighting primer

Now that the snow here in Minnesota has arrived my photo work moves from the plains and prairies to the indoors. (Lived here all my life, still can't stand winter.) I have done a limited amount of table top photography and would like to do more. Subjects are small artifacts such as machine parts, gears and the like. I have a couple 500 watt halogen work lights that I have used during remodeling projects. I have several hardware store variety clamp lights with relfectors. I have a few 24x36 inch sheets of diffuser gels. What I need is some guidance on how to make use of this stuff to produce the best photos. I seem to get either very flat lighting or too much highlight. Are there any on-line sights with good information? Are there any books recommended? Most of the lighting information I have turned up on line relates to portrait or fashion work.

I'm with you on this winter in MN thing -- every year when the first

snow falls I start checking out real estate prices further south.

 

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I'd check out Light - Science & Magic by Fil Hunter (Southdale

Library has a copy if you are in the metro) -- this one will be great

for helping you deal with reflections. The Photographer's Studio

Manual by Michale Freeman has a lot of info on just tabletop work

with a pretty good lighting section. Secrets of Lighting on Location

by Bob Krist also has a lot of good lighting information in it that

is equally relevant on location as in the studio.

 

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Good luck and keep warm!

A good thing to do is to suspend your diffusion flats above the subject

with a slight feather towards the background (angle the diffusion up

towards the camera... maybe on a 30 degree angle). What you will also

have to figure is angle of incident of the light for your highlight

control. To make life easier, get a large (read LARGE) sheet of

foamcore and instead of shooting through a diffusion flats, set your

lights close to camera reflecting into your sheet of foamcore. This

will give you a beautiful and very controllable large highlight

(especially on shiney objects). Have the foamcore about 1 foot over the

product (just out of camera view). Don't forget to use type L film or

an 80A filter. Almost anything can be used as a background to enhance

your products. Something else to think about...

The best lighting theory book around is Ross Lowell's "Matters of

Light & Depth". Especially if you're interested in using continuous

light sources....be careful with your halogens and using diffusion

materials. We use a whole bunch of scrap sheets of gatorboard (the

stiff version of foam core, comes in solid black and white sheets as

well....thicknesses up to an inch, a great product), we have small &

large mirrors as well that we use in the studio....in our shop we use

4x8 sheets of plex that's backed with silvered mylar foil....this

makes a great mirror that's indestructible....and can be cut to fit

any need.

 

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One type of lighting that works nicely for tabletop product work, is

to backlight the object, and use mirrors/cards to bounce fill light

back into the front & sides. This will give you nice halo type foram

around the piece....if you shoot onto a sweep, you can use cards to

feather the light off the background, by moving the cards around, or

just angling the light right, you can get a nice gradated background

this way.....use your mirrors to kick in nice specular highlights for

shape & form. It's usually preferable to show one direction only to

your shadows because there's only one sun in nature....so, angle the

mirrors or mask off the bottom portions with black tape or rosco foil

(blackwrap) to keep them from skimming light onto the tabletop. Uhm,

lastly judge all lighting from the camera position---put your head at

the lens, or use the ground glass---having a dark studio or shooting

area is a big help. Even if this means just doing it at night....

 

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If you backlight, be sure to use gobos/flags to keep the flare off

your lens....you'll never have too many stands or clamps in the

studio......that's a crash course I guess....for your small metal

objects, they'll require a different type of lighting than say a

wooden object....but really, the best thing you can do to get started

is to just play around with the lights and see what works best for

you. good luck.

Regards the caution to be careful with the halogen lights and

diffusion materials, do you mean just because of the heat and fire

risk or is there some other issue? I know these halogens get hot but

then again so does a 250 watt photo flood. The halogens work lights

seem to offer a good source for lots of light. It may be hard to

control it however since these designed to illuminate a large area.

Perhaps some ad hoc barn doors from black foil would help.

 

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In my previous attempts I found that the the loss shooting through

diffusers and off reflectors left me with pretty low illumintation

levels. I am shooting with a view camera so F16-22 is where I need to

be, not F2.8-4. My previous attempt had a 2x3 foot diffuser above the

subject with the photo floods a foot above the diffuser. White card

reflectors to fill in the other side. Perhaps what I was missing was

the mirror to create the highlights. I have used aluminum foil

relfectors to try and create highlights and that showed some promise.

 

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Thanks for the information and assistance.

Yeah, it was like a CYA disclaimer so you wouldn't burn your house

down...seriously, I've worked in both all tungsten studios, and all

strobe...we use a combination of both where I work now. But in the

form of studio strobes like Speedotron and hotlights like Lowell

Omnis, Totas, Rifas and some old Mole Richradson stuff....even a

studio strobe puts off quite a bit of heat when it fires...so you need

to be careful with all that stuff, especially if you're going to be

covering it up or trying to flag it off....a Tota Light is a 750 watt

max. quartz broad faced light....you have to use it oriented on it's

long side to dissapate the heat off the thing, and you use metal flags

and barndoors close, but not too close to the face.....same with

diffusion materials like Rosco tough spun, etc.....these are all used

about 12 inches or so away from the lamp, but in a frame....and even

then, they can warp up or get a little distorted.....any time you

start diffusing or bouncing a light around, you'll loose some of the

intensity....

 

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When you shoot with a view camera and use hotlights, even big fresnels

or banks of strip lights, your exposures are not in the

seconds...they're like 5, 10-15 minutes.....everything is locked

down...you can walk across a set in front of a camera and not even

register on the film....and likewise, you can do things like move

lightsources or cards around and "dodge" a shot.....it's a different

type of studio work.

 

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If you shoot this way, make sure that you use the right color balanced

film for color, of course, and also make sure that you're on a rock

solid surface. Don't shoot on carpets, second floors, in buildings

next to roads with alot of traffic etc....99% of the time, when we

shoot in the studio, even with strobes--we don't use the

shutter....our studio is completely flat black. We just turn out all

the lights, pull the darkslide, wait for the camera to settle out and

then expose throuugh multiple pops....with hotlights, what you'd do

would be to just use a card to mask off the lens....alot of studios

work this way. Lift the box off the lens carefully and start your stop

watch.....

 

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If you're shooting small items, bellows factor will add up too....I

learned to light with fresnels and hotlights, and it is easier to

"see" what you're getting with them, but you may actually find

something like a focusing spot or a fresnel keg light a better choice,

than just a broad type fixture. Because you may need about 1-2000

watts worth to pull off a shot. Like a whole overhead bank of them.

Maybe four all on a strip spaced out. If you had enough ceiling

height, to safely get them up, you could construct a bank of them and

then lay out a scrim or a flat of tough spun or some fire retardent

diffusion material underneath on a hanging frame ( with some

distance between)....then by angling this around, you can control the

light a bit. Like a softbox. The use your mirrors, or if you had a

small focusing light, use it as your main...this overhead is for the

fill....

 

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For myself, I have 2 small lighting kits, one is a dynalight kit with

3 heads....and the other is one I've cobbled together that's 2

Totalights and an Omni, plus a couple of umbrellas, a boom and some

metal flags.....I can shoot at f45 or so with just an Omni on a boom,

on a small tabletop...so it can be done. With the hotlights, you can

just play around with them, figuring out what works best for you...

Sorry for my horrible spelling in that last post...I've spent too much

time in the dark today....when you say small metal machine parts and

gears, just what type of metal? You know, how reflective is it, and

what are you trying to show? I do quite a bit of what you might call

technical shots of artifacts (I work in a museum), it's not really

fine art or commercial, just clean shots for research.... we shoot

alot of metal, woodwork, textiles etc.... alot of detail shots of

firearms: lockplates, rifling etc....so what are you trying to do?

The metal parts I have in mind are mostly greasy rusted parts off old

farm equipment. Cast metal levers that may be several inches long

with foundry markings. All oxidized metals, nothing with any more

shine than the grease that hasn't hardened completely. My goal is

artistic. I photograph old farmsteads and rural scenes and thought

some individual component pieces would be an interesting project.

Well, then that's a good thing in a way...if they're not brand new and

all shiny, then that gives you quite a bit of leeway

lighting-wise....you can do just about anything. Use raking hardlight

to bring out textures, play around with cast shadows & forms

etc....you could try flat/soft lighting to just do a documentary type

look....you can use glare on the surfaces to bring out details and

textures...

 

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If they're not actual "artifacts", and you're not worried about

damaging them, then there are alot of possibilities probably in

setting them up....you could get creative with props or mounts for

them...."float" them on glass above a background, use hardlight and

throw the shadows out of the shot (from the height of the glass

platform)...or you can use sheets of glossy black plex. There are ways

to shoot items on this surface--by putting cards overhead and

carefully spotting hardlights up onto them, bounced down in a small

pool of light onto the object--that look like the piece is floating in

a pool of oil......you can make mounts to hold the things out

"suspended" in air over the table, etc.....alot of this stuff we can't

do because of possible damage to artifacts.....but, if you can get

some focused light, or a good throw of hardlight, you may be able to

play around with contrast and shadows....good luck.

 

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Opinions expressed in this message may not represent the policy of my

agency.

Those are some good thoughts on creating a suspended look with clear

glass. The black plexiglass may be interesting for the oil pool look.

It sort of makes me think of photos I've seen where the object

emerges from the pool.

I certainly don't have to worry about damaging the items. If they get

damaged they would have to go back to the scrap heaps and junk yards

from whence they came. I have some old industrial controls and gauges

that I have collected from clients over the years that I may do some

experimenting with.

I have made frames for my diffusers which work well. With the photo

floods I typically had the gels about 18 inches from the object with

the light about 12 inches from the gel. That seemed like a good

starting point. I'll keep trying things until I come up with the

right look.

I can't take credit for the plex idea....we had the oportunity to

briefly meet a couple of the Smithsonian staff photographers a few

years back, and they showed us some neat shots they had done that

way....it may be surprising to some people, but the Smithsonian is one

of the few institutions I've ever come across that actually uses

hotlights in their studio....our conservators would freak out & kill

us if we did that here....heat is one thing, UV output is

another.....those guys were using massive fresnel keglights....one

thing in common that we did was to use this reflector material called

"lightform" that delta used to carry....it's discontinued now, but

they were pre cut sheets of cardboard with silver on one side and

white on the other...with a magnetic clasp...you could fold them up

into little triangles and adjust the angles easily...they came with

about 20 different sizes on a sheet, and cost about 15 bucks...

 

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They were huge scroungers just like us too....we have a full

carpentry/exhibits shop here and just use alot of scrap materials in

the studio...like the mirrors and gatorboard, acryllic rods and

mounts, plex etc....one trick we do for small backgrounds is to take

an unexposed sheet of matte RC paper and run it through our

processor...voila!--a clean white background....you want black? Fog it

and run it through the machine....they did something similar, but

used an RA4 processor and c-prints.....

 

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So, you just have to be sorta creative...I've used the glass idea for

shooting coins and small buttons, arrowheads etc....I'll clamp a

thick, clean & clear sheet of glass to a bogen superclamp, and suspend

it over a copystand setup about a foot off a background of maybe black

velevet or some other color.....you can then skim hardlights and cast

shadows out of the shot pretty easily this way. Or light from beneath

as well...this is another way to get a very clean white background,

but the problems come in dealing with reflections off the glass (you

have to mask the camera), or dust on the glass....so, it's really a

pain to do in practice. Sometimes it's what you need to do, though.

 

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I can recommend one great, but out of print book on this sort of

thing: Alfred Blaker's, "Photography For Scientific Publication",

another similar book might be the Cambridge Press's "Photography for

Archaeology and Conservation". The Blaker book is the best.....good

luck & have fun, maybe start digging around the junkyards for studio

props as well.....