How to light product shots with rounded edges and so

[mikeyank]

My dilemma:

I work in kitchen cabinetry industry. I am trying to photograph

cabinet doors: 15 X 18. I am using continuous lighting.

 

My problem is the rounded ages and groves on the shape of the door.

No matter how I position my lights, rounded edges always reflect

light and produce glare.

 

What can I do to get rid of it? I tried softening with defusers,

bouncing off light.... What else can I do?<div></div>

[nino]

try a polariser.

[garry edwards]

Basically you need to reflect light from the grooves and the profiles, it's what makes it come to life.

 

But glare is something else. Basically you need DIFFUSED specular highlights that you can see through to the wood beneath. This is all explained in the weekly lighting theme on diffused specular highlights.http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007tNJ

[bruce levy]

Yoy can also use your main light at a "raking" or oblique angle to bring out the depth, while using a fill to reduce the ratio to the level that you like. Coming in from an extreme angle from the side will accentuate the medeling, and by moving up or down you can pretty much contro where the specular highlights wil be, and how intense. Play with the ratio also. Then use a polarizer to tweak the reflections.

[bruce levy]

I don't think I typed all those typos above. Sorry, after all it is 4:20.

[jeremy_esland]

What you are suffering from there is indeed "glare", i.e. the curved surface is reflecting the light source itself directly into the lens of the camera. Put another way, you are looking at a reflection of the light source which is, of course, white. This problem is probably compounded by the area surrounding the subject being white as well. You'll be better off surrounding the subject with black material (including behind the camera) and then moving your lights around to find the position that produces the minimum reflection of the light on those curved parts.

 

A polariser will cut down the reflection a little, but I doubt that it will do so completely in this case.

 

I'd recommend a copy of "Light, Science & Magic" by Fil Hunter and Paul Fuqua. Easy to read and understand: you'll see immediately (Chapter 3) why you are having problems.

[savas_kyprianides]

That is a great book. I loved reading my copy of it.

[clauder]

Am I the only one to think that a polarizer won't do anything at all, as light reflected off wood is not polarized? or am I completely off base here?

[garry edwards]

Claude,

 

You're off base here - a polariser might help just a bit, but it certainly isn't the answer, which is to light it properly.

 

To get the maximum effect from polarisation a linear polariser would need to be fitted both to the lights and to the lens. Continuous lighting sources just 'cook' the screen, which then renders it useless unless it's positioned well away from the heat, which becomes very expensive.

 

Having done all that, the angles need to be right too.

[clauder]

Hi Garry,

 

Thanks for that correction! I thought I had somewhere in my mind that you need unpolarized light reflected off a metal or water surface for it to be polarized, and to get a polarizer to work (except of course if you put a polarizer on the light source, that effectively does the same...)

 

can't be right all the time :-)