Day 4 - Glass Study

sheridanphoto has added a photo to the pool:

4/365

Its was a freezing cold day today, so I decided to do some more light experiments. I’ve been reading a book called ‘Light Science & Magic’ which is the photographers bible when it comes to understanding the physical properties of light as they apply to lighting objects especially difficult subjects such as highly reflective surfaces and glass. For a long time I have wanted to test out some of the lighting experiments covered in the book. So today I decided to attempt some ‘Bright Field Lighting’. Bright field lighting is a technique that helps to define the edges of the glass so that its structure stands out. Basically it involves lighting the glass from behind through a diffuse material such as a white bed sheet or a proper diffuser. Black gobo’s (anything that stops light) are used on each side of the glass in order to create the defined dark edges that bring out the glasses structure.

For this shot I cobbled together a little studio from two light stands, a monopod, sticky tape, clamps and some of the white A1 sheets like the yellow one I used for the Day1 shot. The light for this was an Elinchrom D-Lite head set to its lowest power 1.0 and it was fired using one of Elinchrom’s Skyport devices. This head has a built in receiver so all you need to do is attach the transmitter part to your hot shoe and you are good to go. I used a large diffuser on the head and a large round diffuser as a background for the glasses. See setup picture below.

Overall I’m happy with the result apart form the fact that I didn’t have a sheet of perspex or glass to put under the glasses to give a reflection. I think the shot would have looked better with the reflection (next time). This shot was taken with my Nikon D700 and my 24-70 f/2.8 lens. I applied some basic exposure adjustments in Aperture 3 and did some cleaning up in Photoshop CS5, sensor dirt was visible because of the aperture of f/22. I also, changed the white balance to give the blue effect as I though the glasses stand out from the background a little more. The plain white version looked a little flat.

Shot details: ISO 200, 58mm, 0 ev, f/22, 1/250