Photographic bight shiny objects?

I've got to shoot some sailing trophies -- highly polished silver with
lettering engraved on them. The lettering needs to be readable in the
photos.

Any non-obvious tricks to get good lighting without lots of glare and
reflections off the polished surfaces?

"Roy Smith" wrote:

I've got to shoot some sailing trophies -- highly polished silver with
lettering engraved on them. The lettering needs to be readable in the
photos.

Any non-obvious tricks to get good lighting without lots of glare and
reflections off the polished surfaces?

Try a polarizer. Don't expect wonders but it might reduce some of the
reflections somewhat.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Roy Smith wrote:
I've got to shoot some sailing trophies -- highly polished silver with
lettering engraved on them. The lettering needs to be readable in the
photos.

Any non-obvious tricks to get good lighting without lots of glare and
reflections off the polished surfaces?

Use small point sources of light, such as low voltage tungsten halogen
bulbs with no reflectors, in combination with a very wide diffuse
lighting such as in a light box, or from some large reflecting or
diffusing panels. Adjust to taste :-)

--
Chris Malcolm DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

Roy Smith wrote:
I've got to shoot some sailing trophies -- highly polished silver with
lettering engraved on them. The lettering needs to be readable in the
photos.

Any non-obvious tricks to get good lighting without lots of glare and
reflections off the polished surfaces?

A ring light might help, if the surface with the
lettering is flat. Tilt the lettered surface so that
reflections from the ring light are not straight back at
the camera. However, with curved surfaces there isn't
much hope of avoiding at least some glare from the
light.

In that case, consider multiple lights, and also a
"light box" or "light tent". The trick with multiple
lights is to position them such that the glare does not
detract from the object. Generally two lights will do,
and one of those will be at very close to perpendicular
to the axis of the lense. Placement of the other
depends on the glare. With a light box/tent, the idea
is to get diffuse light from every direction, thus
reducing the contrast of the glare.

I prefer a light box, simply because they are so easy to
construct from cardboard boxes. If your trophies are 4
feet tall though, it might be a problem... but there
are solutions for that too.

Do a google search on "light-box glare photography", and
it will provide several examples.

However, in a quick review I didn't see any that showed
the particular construction that I prefer. So I've
resurrected something I had on my web page a couple
years ago for a short time just for one individual to
look at. I dumped about half of it (it was actually to
compare several different alternatives to expensive
"macro lenses", and showed several compartive images),
and have just left the comparison between a ring light
and a light box, plus some images of the light box
showing how it works.

http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson/dime/

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

In article ,
(Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:

However, in a quick review I didn't see any that showed
the particular construction that I prefer. So I've
resurrected something I had on my web page a couple
years ago for a short time just for one individual to
look at. I dumped about half of it (it was actually to
compare several different alternatives to expensive
"macro lenses", and showed several compartive images),
and have just left the comparison between a ring light
and a light box, plus some images of the light box
showing how it works.

http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson/dime/

Thanks for that! I need to scale it up a bit (these are maybe 24 inches
high), but the concept looks pretty straight forward.

David J. Littleboy wrote:
"Roy Smith" wrote:

I've got to shoot some sailing trophies -- highly polished silver with
lettering engraved on them. The lettering needs to be readable in the
photos.

Any non-obvious tricks to get good lighting without lots of glare and
reflections off the polished surfaces?

Try a polarizer. Don't expect wonders but it might reduce some of the
reflections somewhat.

Polarizers only work on non-metallic reflecting surfaces,
which silver isn't.

-Wolfgang

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:38:46 -0500, Roy Smith wrote:

I've got to shoot some sailing trophies -- highly polished silver with
lettering engraved on them. The lettering needs to be readable in the
photos.

Any non-obvious tricks to get good lighting without lots of glare and
reflections off the polished surfaces?

You need a macro studio set up. There a ton of folding sets for
$60-$100 or you can make your own for next to nothing. Search on
"macro studio" for plans.

For lights I use small battery slave strobes ($20 from Ritz or Wolf)
triggered by on camera flash with a water bomb defuser.

On Feb 11, 10:39 pm, Roy Smith wrote:
In article ,
(Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:

However, in a quick review I didn't see any that showed
the particular construction that I prefer. So I've
resurrected something I had on my web page a couple
years ago for a short time just for one individual to
look at. I dumped about half of it (it was actually to
compare several different alternatives to expensive
"macro lenses", and showed several compartive images),
and have just left the comparison between a ring light
and a light box, plus some images of the light box
showing how it works.

http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson/dime/

Thanks for that! I need to scale it up a bit (these are maybe 24 inches
high), but the concept looks pretty straight forward.


Tenting is the answer, large frames with white translucent material
on them may be the answer for large objects (Light Forms). Get the
light source larger than the object, put a flash or a continuous light
source behind the frame. Keep the camera from reflecting off the
subject. A polarizer might help, with the above set up, but if your
light source is not bright enough it does subtract 2 stops of light.

Tom

Tom

Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
Polarizers only work on non-metallic reflecting surfaces,
which silver isn't.

I happen to have a silver-plated trophy and a polariser to hand; it works
for me! Can you cite a contrary scientific source, please?

Mike.
--
If reply address = connectfee, add an r because it is free not fee.

In article ,
Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:


Polarizers only work on non-metallic reflecting surfaces,
which silver isn't.

-Wolfgang

I disagree.

--
Reality is a picture perfected and never looking back.