sarah_lange1 Posted December 22, 2012 Share Posted December 22, 2012 Hi, looking for some help. I am trying to photograph a framed award. The medal (like an Olympic medal) is set against black felt or something black. There is highly reflective glass in front and it's all in a box so there's depth. But the big issue is the glass. And the black backing makes it worse. I've taken many photos and there are just tons of reflections everywhere. Even when I thought I had it, I saw the tripod legs reflected. I tried making the room totally dark with super long shutter speed. Nope. The trouble is if there's enough light for a photo there's enough light for reflections, even the camera. It has to be straight on, not at angle. And I can't take glass out. Thank you. I also tried polarizer. No improvement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Laur Posted December 22, 2012 Share Posted December 22, 2012 <p>Shoot from farther away, using a longer focal length, so that the family of angles involved in the reflections are much narrower. <br /><br />Do you have control over the environment, or can you move the frame, or move flags/scrims around to control the light sources you see in the reflections?<br /><br />And remember that you <em>can</em> shoot from ever so slightly off-center, and can easily correct the perpective/keystoning distortion after the fact in post production.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarah_lange1 Posted December 22, 2012 Author Share Posted December 22, 2012 Thank you for those suggestions. Yes, I can control the environment. I don't have any scrims but could do something makeshift. I have overheard fluorescents, window light, a studio light and soft box.... I have been trying this with ambient or the fluorescents, no strobes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lou_Meluso Posted December 22, 2012 Share Posted December 22, 2012 <p>You could try a square of black matte board, cut a whole in the center and shoot that way to minimize direct reflections. Showing an image of what your'e getting could be helpful.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nathansanborn Posted December 22, 2012 Share Posted December 22, 2012 <p>I would use your studio lights or strobes. If you set them up far enough to the sides the reflection of the light will not be visible to the camera, and the reflections of everything else in the room will be so underexposed that they will become invisible.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarah_lange1 Posted December 22, 2012 Author Share Posted December 22, 2012 <p>Thank you Louis and Nathan -- both good suggestions. You are giving me hope that it's possible to shoot this. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James G. Dainis Posted December 22, 2012 Share Posted December 22, 2012 If the glass can't "see" anything to reflect your get no reflections. A totally dark room with the lights off to the side and no light spilling back onto you should do the trick. James G. Dainis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarah_fox Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 <p>Use a long lens, and set up a black target (e.g. black foam core) right beside your camera. With plenty of light on your camera and target, tilt the frame very slightly, so that you see the black target reflected in the glass from the viewpoint of the camera. It will only take a very slight tilt. Then rearrange your lighting and shoot. As much as possible, the medal should be illuminated from the sides, and you should minimize light falling on the black target. Also, you should avoid the use of fluorescent light. Fluorescent = evil for at least a few reasons.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfcole Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 <p>I've shot something much worse: a violin. A framed picture has one flat surface, but a violin isn't flat, is shiny, and is vulnerable to light coming from ANY direction. It just seemed like an impossible task. However, I was able to do it with strobes by turning them away and bouncing off of walls. Everything just has to be very diffused.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcuknz Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 <p>The solution is simple though perhaps hard to implement ... organise a no light or blackness from where the reflections are coming from. So the camera sees darkness rather than lightness.<br> It CAN be at an angle if you have the controls to correct this in your editor.<br> Hide the tripod legs with black cloth like the Victorians hid table legs.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
starshooter Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 <p>Many photographers use reflectors to add light to the subject of a photo. You can also use something black to reflect dark into your photo.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpo3136b Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 <p>Light, Science and Magic by Fuqua.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
q.g._de_bakker Posted December 24, 2012 Share Posted December 24, 2012 How deep is the frame? There is a trick used to photograph thingies like mirrors 'head on' without seeing the camera's reflection. It involves a camera with movement. You set it up to one side of the subject, with both lens and film planes parallel to it so the geometry of the mirror/subject remains 'squared' as if shot head on, and then shift the front or back until the subject is framed the way you want it to.<br><br>Perspective then of course still is that of a position to one side of the subject. That means that what you see reflected in the subject is not the space where you and your camera are, but a space on the other side of the subject. You can hang a large piece of black velvet there.<br>It however also means that if the subject has a depth that is relatively large compared to the lens to subject distance, you get to see that you are not directly in front of the subject. Despite taking the picture from onse side of the subject, there may not be any converging horizontals thanks to the film plane being parallel, but you ar still looking at it from one side, so also at the right side of a frame. But if the depth of the frame is not that great, you will not notice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarah_lange1 Posted December 24, 2012 Author Share Posted December 24, 2012 <p>Wow, so many great answers! Thank you very much. All of these suggestions sound promising. I am going to tackle this again this week after Christmas and give a couple of these ideas a try. <br> Sarah, I know fluorescents are bad :-( but I am stuck with them at the moment. I will turn them off and maybe take the black screens from my windows for some natural light even though it's uneven as it's from only one side. <br> QG, The depth is about 1.5 inches. <br> John, Thank you on the book suggestion. Guess what? I am reading it right now. I just got it a few days ago and am on Chapter 3 or 4. I'll look ahead to see if it covers something like this since you suggested it here. <br> Happy New Year. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarah_fox Posted December 24, 2012 Share Posted December 24, 2012 <blockquote> <p>I will turn them off and maybe take the black screens from my windows for some natural light even though it's uneven as it's from only one side.</p> </blockquote> <p>Add light from the other side with a reflector. If you don't have one, go to an auto parts store, and buy a silvery sun shade -- the type that is unfolded and placed in the windshield. Get the compact kind that has a wire frame and coils up into a little disc. It's a very handy thing to carry with you anyway -- doubles for an ad-hoc reflector AND a dandy gizmo to keep your car interior cool and in great shape! ;-)</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James G. Dainis Posted December 24, 2012 Share Posted December 24, 2012 Sarah L,<BR> You are going the wrong way. You don't want to open the windows to lighten the entire room, and hence have more things lit up to reflect, you want to darker the room and the objects in it. <P> I have long since sold or given away most of my lighting equipment. My wife had some collages consisting of glossy snapshot photos framed under glass. She wanted photos taken of them so she could have poster prints made. <P> They were on walls in a small bedroom. I covered the wide window with a dark blanket. I placed two table lamps with lampshades on either side of a collage. I placed dark towels on the backs of the lampshades so the light would only shine forward onto the collage not back into the room onto me, the back wall, tripod, etc. The bulbs in the lamps were of a "daylight" so the auto white balance did a good job. There were no other lights turned on in the room. My only difficulty was carefully adjusting the camera and tripod so the collages were perfectly square in the frame. <P> Glossy prints under glass but the prints and glass didn't "see" anything to reflect.<P> <center><img src="http://jdainis.com/poster2a.jpg"></center> James G. Dainis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpo3136b Posted December 24, 2012 Share Posted December 24, 2012 <p>Look for the spatula and the bottles in Fuqua's book.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarah_lange1 Posted December 28, 2012 Author Share Posted December 28, 2012 <p>Thanks again. Good idea on the reflector Sarah. I do have a silver reflector and it stands up so it may work. Thank you James, nice job on the framed photos. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarah_lange1 Posted January 7, 2013 Author Share Posted January 7, 2013 <p>Update: Thanks again for all your suggestions. I ended up following Louis Meluso's suggestion and got a black cardboard poster board and cut a hole in it and stuck the camera lens thru that and voila! It worked like a charm. I also turned off the fluorescents and used just the modeling lamp on my studio strobe (with large soft box) for light. And way to the side. 90 degrees. The only reflection I got was the rough white cardboard hole where I'd cut out the hole, the white perimeter from the interior of the poster board. So I got a black Sharpie pen and filled it in black to match the poster board and then that eliminated that reflection, although I could've zapped it in Photoshop too. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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