Lighting A Highly Reflective Object

Gale Spring, Adjunct Associate Professor of Scientific Photography at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia demonstrates a method used to provide even lighting for a highly reflective object.

[@doloresneilson5349]

Thank you. You could have tried to make still life photography over complicated to make yourself seem self important...but your humility, skill and generous knowledge taught us simple basics that is the foundation of good lighting. I am grateful for your generosity in teaching us the simple concepts in simple terms. Easy to understand and not necessary to spend a ton of money.

[@JMC01644]

This video helped me to improve my photos 100%! Thank you sooo much!

[@MrStoffzor]

Me, just looking for ways to take pics of my dope gaming rig with glass side panels: I bet youtube has some simple tricks to avoid glare in the glass. Also me after watching a forencics technician with a whole setup specialized for this use: Yep I'm shit outta luck.

[@videocasetteTV]

Awesome, what is the purpose of the scale

[@MsTribus]

would you say a cloudy winter day is a good substitue for a soft-box ?

[@reginnazhidov6687]

this is so good! thank you.

[@EmF95573]

This video has helped me so much with rare book photography! Thank you!

[@harrylau3737]

really like it!!!hope for more videoes from you

[@Revealthefactsbpsolanki3456]

🙏 Thanks for informative video 🙏

[@galespring9028]

I'm glad you found it helpful. It's a simple but often overlooked concept.

[@abame9132]

Hi-- Very good tutorial video -- could u tell me what brand of soft box light you are using

[@galespring9028]

Thanks for your question. The one in the video is made by Broncolor. There are many good brands of soft boxes on the market. Most people are limited to those that fit (or are made for) their flash equipment. In general, all are fine. You can also make diffusion flats from materials like ripstop. The main concern with any diffusion material is it does not have a color bias. With most digital cameras you can do a custom white balance, but this becomes complicated if you are using, say, three soft boxes with different diffusion materials, all exhibiting slightly different color biases. And sorry if I told you more than you wanted to know!

[@kiaash]

Thank you!

[@JoshuaFernandez11]

Placing the mirror on the edge of the table like that made me really nervous.

[@galespring9028]

Joshua, thanks for you observation. I agree with you. I would have freaked out if one of my students had done that. In my 50+ years of doing photography, I have never broken anything....well, not exactly true. In my early years, I had a Sekonic light meter strap around my next but placed the actual meter in my shirt pocket. I was working in ankle-deep sea water when I bent over to look at something. The meter was dangling in the water like a fishing lure. It never worked again and I don't place it in my pocket any longer. If it's dangling around my waist, I always know it's there.

[@magedzaki9637]

What was that scale used for?

[@pow9606]

So the viewer of the photo has a good idea of the knife size.

[@cuonghungnguyen]

Thanks for the tutorial, professor. I am having trouble taking photos of sunglasses with mirror lenses upfront. Do you have any tips for that? Thanks

[@cuonghungnguyen]

@@galespring9028 Thank you very much for your detailed explanation

[@TRAVELVIETNAM]

very good channel thank you

[@vinodaggarwal8384]

how to used in shoot leance

[@lopeyoksamson7680]

Thank you to for your time

[@Croquecigrue]

Merci !

[@lopeyoksamson7680]

Merci ! yeah but you can't cover my dream

[@zeepowerplay]

Thank very much for Pakistan

[@galespring9028]

I'm glad you found this useful. Good luck with all your photography.

[@alisherakramov6232]

so useful. thank you sexy

[@CaptainMyCaptain33]

How to photograph a murder weapon

[@chrisstocker]

Why so dirty? put me off the whole thing. Covered in crap, that's not professional. Insane.

[@SuperLumberjock]

That's not a knife.

[@Kukainis]

guy has 40x40cm octa and calls it a"large light source" :D

[@LaserLady]

I can now take pictures of my jewelry as good as murder weapons! Awesome!

[@galespring9028]

Be careful. I've seen jewellery used as weapons! :) Happy shooting.

[@tenetparanoia3182]

You should remove ur fingerprints before getting rid of the knife, or just wait for the authorities

[@benjaminleikness9241]

@ozayevable no you are

[@daviddeering8619]

Your experience and expertise was very helpful and appreciated!

[@galespring9028]

Glad you enjoyed it.

[@BlaxkNobility]

Gale Spring Hello Mr Spring Any books that you can recommended for photography lighting.

[@galespring9028]

@@BlaxkNobility Sorry for the long delay. I just saw your question. The best book for lighting is Light Science and Magic. There are various editions - all good. Easy to find via Amazon or a good bookstore that has photo books. The authors are Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fuqua. A Focal Press book. A definite must for photo lighting.

[@onkall1191]

Thank you indeed for this straight forward, both common sense and rich professional experience based piece of advice.

[@piecesarts]

THANK YOU!!! This helped me out so much with my jewelry photography.

[@galespring6447]

Thanks for you comment. Jewellery photography has to be one of the most challenging applications. Small and lots of shiny surfaces at every angle. I can only assume you have a lot of patience! I'm glad to have helped in a small (and possibly shiny) way.

[@piecesarts]

It definitely wasted a lot of time trying to figure things out for myself and watching videos that didn't address my specific needs. Luckily, I found your video :) Things are moving along faster and my photos are starting to look a lot better.

[@galespring6447]

May I also suggest a book called "Light Science & Magic' by Hunter, Biver and Fuqua. Pretty easy to read and covers the concepts of lighting extremely well. There are several editions. I'm not sure what the latest version is. All good.

[@piecesarts]

Thank you, Gale. Will definitely look for it.

[@mikevanwieringen9883]

Great, straight to the point tutorial...At work I have to photograph a lot of products packed in transparent polyethylene bags, which are much more shiny than the knife used as example in this video...Any idea if that same technique shown here would work for those shiny polyethylene bags ?

[@galespring9028]

Mike, great question. Actually, you want to basically do the opposite of what I have demonstrated. To image the knife, you are actually imaging the reflection of the light source off the surface of the knife. With your shiny polyethylene bags, you want to avoid/eliminate the reflection. Without seeing your products (and problem), I suggest you slightly move the position of the light source where the reflection disappears or, at least, is minimised. It's like looking in a mirror - at one angle you see yourself but move slightly left or right and you only see what's basically behind you. Another possible solution involves using polarising filters over the light source(s) and the camera lens. Polarising filters control/eliminate reflections on many surfaces. For total control, you need one over the light source and one on the lens. I'm sorry I don't have a KZbin on that technique. It's a very useful technique to know - maybe a new video will come! Depending on where you live, try to contact an art gallery/museum that photographs art works and ask them about cross-polarised light photography. I'm happy to comment further - maybe offline so we don't turn my response into a full-blown lecture!

[@mikevanwieringen9883]

@@galespring9028 Thank you Gale for chiming in ...I will try your tips and see how it works out ;) Thank you and keep up the good work

[@hatty279]

I can still see the camera and my arms in the reflection

[@tomvadnais]

Great and useful, as always, Gale. Thanks! I would add an interim step with a white or gray balance card to ensure accurate colors. Cheers!

[@keith2599]

Many thanks for this great simplified lighting tutorial Proffesor...

[@ravithakker2007]

Many thanks, have been looking for a tutorial for exactly the same problem and this seems to explain how to go about it quite nicely.

[@galespring9028]

Glad it helped. Lighting is everything!

[@RajbirSingh-os1gr]

Excellent presentation.Thanks and congratulations,

[@arete_]

Is this some crime lab or something? Looks really chilling 😂

[@danwittmayer6539]

Excellent video production! The lesson on the proceedure for tabletop forensic imaging spoke volumes. Gale Spring's statement about eliminating specular highlights misleads. A small light source like the on-camera flash used by the crime scene photographer, which yields a white dot for a specular highlight has no detail in it as Mr. Dale states. Having a large light source softens the contrast of the specular highlights, which enables us to have detail in the specular highlights. The way to record the black handle of the subject knife is to spread the specular highlight over the form by using the soft light, as in this good demo. Thus, Mr. Dale ably shows his students how to control, not eliminate the specularity.

[@nuryanyosapalomino2502]

Thank you so much for your tips and video!! I finally could achieve my shot (:

[@manuelbr9901]

Excelent! I'm doing a museographic catalog and we have many methalic instruments wich must be photographed in detail. This video is very helpfull

[@killingbeatrice9788]

That mirror thing it's brilliant! Thank you

[@ritgerj]

this is great thank you for the help

[@asadabdulqaabir4006]

Greetings Mr. Springs. I see you already answer a question about what brand and model of light unit did you use in your excelent demonstration, but, I'm still confused, Is it a strobe or a continuous light source?

[@asadabdulqaabir4006]

@@galespring9028 Now I got it. Thank you very much!

[@thomaswarren2699]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who uses blu tack! Blu tack is one of the most important weapons in my photo arsenal!

[@galespring6447]

Wouldn't be without it. Thanks for the comment (and the confirmation!)

[@LillianThorington]

Good content. Thank you.

[@sensualalchemy]

Incredibly articulate and helpful information!

[@stratofercho]

Muchas gracias por este gran aporte

[@oRBTo]

Any specific tips on how much larger the light source needs to be than the subject?

[@oRBTo]

Thank you @@galespring9028..

[@markharris5771]

You must have the world's most fascinating, yet I'm sure at times upsetting, job. I noticed your light didn't look like the average studio strobe, is it different in any way? Thank you for this video.

[@galespring9028]

Thanks for your comment, Mark. The job does push your limits at times. Challenging, but rewarding. As for the light, the one in the video is a Broncolor Impact 41 (no longer made) and an 80cm Broncolor soft box. I like it because it's relatively light, compact size, produces a lot of light and extremely good colour quality. There are many good soft boxes on the market today and combined with some small portable electronic flash units (like the Nikon 910 if you're a Nikon geek) do an excellent job. I have larger (and newer) flash units similar to the one in the video, but they are also heavier and, for tabletop photography, put out a lot more light than I need. FYI, the demo with the knife came out of a recent case where blood streaks combined with black ash from a fire was obscuring a lot of detail in the photograph of the knife blade (taken by the police with a in-built, on-camera flash). It was, as many things are, simply a problem with lighting.

[@lopeyoksamson7680]

am glad for your comment what are some of things that i will do to get quality photos. This is my first trial

[@MrJcasilva]

Muito Bom! Show de bola!

[@kooroshhaziny8992]

Thank you for the video, I appreciate that.

[@galespring9028]

Glad you enjoyed the video. I hope it helps you with future lighting issues.

[@redtobertshateshandles]

Thanks Professor Spring. Awesome for sharing.

[@mado5957]

thats not shiny!!!

[@amaliacostea9556]

Hi, could you tell me the lens you used? Thank you