What to do with a piano?

[steve_levine]

I started out shooting furniture as an assistant 30 years ago. But I

havent shot much "wood" since. My client has roped me into a self

promotion shot for his piano restoration business. The subject is an

extremely rare, early STEINWAY. The shot will have to be done at

their shops, not my studio. Most likely this will be outdoors under

an overhang on a loading dock.

 

I plan to use a 4 head 1000 WS kit, with 1 large box and 3 smaller

boxes as main ,back and background lights. For fill I have a 1200 WS

mono light w/umbrella. All this with some gray seamless.

 

How would you light this? I was simply going to light the planes of

the piano and have some highlights on the dark wood.

 

If it matters, this is being shot with a M645 and Portra 400VC.

[garry edwards]

Steve,

 

As you know, I photograph a lot of furniture - never the easiest of subjects.

 

I would have thought that it would be better photographed in the context of an elegant room, if at all possible, not against a paper background.

 

I don't know what you mean by a 'large' box, but if you want to get even illumination that will produce soft specular highlights and show the patina properly you will need an extremely large softbox. Personally I think I would probably use a very large diffusion panel fairly frontally with more light bounced from the ceiling (or an overhead reflector). Then, as you suggest, maybe some highlights.

 

Personally, I like strong shadows on furniture. But I think this will need fairly soft lighting both to show the detail and to show that nothing is being hidden.

 

Hope this helps

[kbreak]

I wonder how it would fit on even a 12' roll of paper... I'd sure wanna shoot it in an environment and use only natural lighting as otherwise it's going to be all about the highlights of your own lights and it will drive you nutso.<BR><BR> I'd bring some 4x8' foamcore, the kind with black on one side and white on the other.<BR>

[steve_levine]

My largest box is 3x4 feet. This could be way over my head?

[garry edwards]

Steve,

 

4' x 3' (medium softbox) is nowhere near large enough IMO. If I were you I would use a large diffusion panel.

[root]

I have an upcoming exhibit and two folders full of piano shots here on PN, but I assume you don't want closeups. Everyone has already identified the problem - reflections and specular highlights . I've brought lights to a couple shoots and ended up bouncing them off the walls and ceiling. Very long exposures result with some color correction necessary depending on the color of the walls.

[root]

I've seen lots of shots of piano shops, but the only ones that look anywhere near professional are either closeups or in something resembling a home, stage, or showroom floor. In other words getting a clean background is at least as difficult as getting good even lighting. I think your best bet is to shoot closeups and wait until this piano is sold and/or delivered. I've had no trouble getting permission to shoot my clients' pianos in their home. Ever.

 

(I'm awfully curious to know whose restoration shop this is. I probably know him. Email me, if you think it appropriate.)

[kbreak]

I've never seen an expensive piano that wasn't in expensive surroundings -- also if you have to light it, light it like it was a car. Same difference.

[streetlevel]

Since you are likely getting it outdoors anyway, why not use a large white sheet for a sun

diffusion tent? Just a thought...

[johnny_tergo]

Hey Steve,

We recently lit a piano on a seamless. Fisrt for a large piano you will need a large backdrop. We used 2 12ft. seamless double-stick taped together that gave us a seamless a little smaller than 24'. The backdrop was held up with 2 hi-roller stands, 2 c stand arms, 1 c-stand w/arm fitted with a cardalini, 1 20ft speedrail, 1 10ft speedrail, 1 sleeve, and 2 speedrail ears. this may be a bit difficult to describe so bear with me. After the backdrop I will explain the lighting we used. Okay so for the backdrop...

 

Place the seamless on the speedrail as you normally would and raise it to the height you will want it when you work. Roll out the paper and sweep it out to where you want it. Now when it is where you like, place a mark on the paper up top and roll that paper back up onto the roll. Now bring the roll back down and take it off the speedrail. make sure the area you are working in had a freshly swept clean floor so that you don't ruin the seamless. Next unroll the seamless on the ground till you get to the mark you made on it while it was up on the speedrail. When you get to that point cut the seamless. You will now have one huge pice of seamless paper on the ground. Take the seamless roll and roll it out ontop of that large piece of seamless. When it matches the same length give it a cut. You know have two large pieces of paper one ontop of the other. Take the top piece of paper and slide it out to the side of the other so that the seams match up. Take your shoes off and walk out onto the paper. Now take your double sided tape and stick it to the edge of the bottom sheet. All along the whole edge of the paper. Don't peel back the paper to expose the adhesive yet! Line up the sheet of paper that has no double sided tape to stradle the edge of the paper that has double sided tape. When they are overlapped slowly go along the edge starting from one side and as you peel back the adhesive cover stick the two sheets together and work your way along the whole thing. You now have a HUGE piece of seamless. Great! Now to hang it. Join your 20ft. speedrail to your 10ft. speedrail with the sleeve. Now slide the ears onto the ends of the speedrail. Now take the seamless and tape it to the speedrail set-up. You need to tape it really, really well. You don't want the seamless to come off the rail. Stick the c-stand arms into the nuckle on the hi-rollers. Now take the ears from the speedrail and slide them into the nuckles on the arms. This is so that the speedrail and seamless stand out from the edge of the hi-roller. You should now have a long piece of 30ft. speedrail suspended from 2 hi-rollers. There is a problem that becomes apparent at this point. The speedrail will sag! That is why we have the c-stand with a cardilini clamp. Attatch the cardilini clamp to the speedrail in the center and this will raise along with the rest of the system to hold up the center. Now that you have a nice solid set-up you want to bag the crub out of the hi-rollers and c-stand. Don't want anyhting topling over! Go ahead and raise up your backdrop. Obviously you will need 3 people to do this. Once you are at your pre determined height, lock off the stands and stand back and look at the massive seamless that you just created! LOOKS NICE! I will start another reply to talk about the lights...

[johnny_tergo]

Now that you have your backdrop up and your piano in place you can start on the lighting. Here is what we used, go ahead and use this information as a refrence point as the things we used are diffrent than what you described you had to use. Equipment list: (GRIP EQUIPMENT) 1 20x20 frame with hardware, 1 20x20 silk, 2 hi-roller stands, misc. flags and nets, and 3 V Flats. (LIGHTING EQUIPMENT) 8 Profoto 7A 2400 packs, 8 pro heads, 6 reflectors, 2 disc grid reflectors.

 

We set-up the 20x20 silk on hi-rollers in the spot where we wanted our key light to come from. Then we set-up 6 packs and heads behind the silk shooting thru it. In essence we created a HUGE soft source. You want this to be fairly close to the subject. As close as possible without getting it into the frame. The heads behind the silk need to be staggered evenly... one up high, one down low, one up high, one down low and so on. Once you have your soft source set-up you can start metering the light. You will have to go in and net off certain heads in certain spots to get it to be even. That is a little tricky the first time you do it. But when you figure it out you can get it to be within 1/3 stop across the entire 20x20 silk with 6 heads. Not too bad. You will most likley have to flag off your camera from the light source so keep that in mind. Now you want to add a rim light and that is what you use the grided heads for. That should be pretty obvious how to do, so I will leave that up to you. The v flats are used to fill or negative fill areas of the piano. That is pretty much it. You have to go in and do some fine tuning and tweaking but the final result will be very pleasing.