Lighting with refections

Another Jewelry related shoot. I might be getting a rut but I did learn a lot on this shoot. The background or substrate for this shot was a very refractive material that was almost black, a bit like black acetate. The main or key light did two things for me on this shot. Fist it lit the product and second it provided the reflection to separate the subject from the background. This key light was a strobe shot though a 20 degree grid spot and then though a large piece of frosted plexiglass that was being flown over the subject. By bringing the Key Light very close to the plexiglass I could create a small circle of light that would reflect off the substrate. Another way to shoot it was to move the Key Light way back and then put a flag or cutter on the plexiglass to create a hard line. A third way was feather off the light off the plexiglass to create a soft edge on the reflective surface. A secound light is set up low and to the left of the camera. It's job was to create some sparkle to the silver jewelry. It has a 40 degree grid spot and was set to a lower power than the Key Light. In a shot like this it is important to remember that refections are like a rubber balls. They bounce off a surface on the same angle that they strikes it. So I had to angle the lights so the camera could see the refection that I wanted it to see. Here is a bit more tech stuff. ISO was 100 Shutter was set at 1/125 and the aperture was set to f/16 and f/22 I bracketed each shot with the aperture. I turned the image stabilizer off and set the focus to manual. The image stabilizer was having some trouble. I think it had something to do with the reflection. By putting the camera on manual focus I could place the focus plane in the front third of the subject to maximize the depth of field. Well this is a pretty complex shot so if you have any questions please leave a comment. Of course no one is reading this so I won't hold my breath.
Aloha for now

Jewelry Shoot

Well this is a little like the last post. This was not really a head shot the idea was to show off the jewelery. For this shot I used a “Clam shell lighting technique”. I put a soft box over the top of the subject,very close. Then I put a large bounce card at the bottom and popped two small lights off of that. One light would work but I wanted to keep the recycle time down so I used two a there lowest setting. I needed to hit a f/16 to get everything in sharp focus so the power was set at much higher than it was set for the head shot. In addition to the soft box and the bounce card I hit the left and right of the face with a grid spot. This hard light coming from the back gave the face some shape and highlighted the earrings. You have to watch for the light and make sure you don't light up the nose. That can be nasty.

Head Shot

This was a pretty successful head shot I thought. The background was kinda unique. I had shot in the black paper and wanted a different look. I had some hard board laying around the studio, it's a thin flexible board looks like peg board with out the holes. Well its not to heavy so I hung it with a quick clamp and a auto pole. It took about 2 min to set. Then I bounced the background light off it and bumped up the power a bit. I used the shoe reflector so I could create some graduation. I was shooting at f/5.6 and if I had metered it would got about f/11 at the background right behind the sitter. My lens was the 85mm prim so the trick bit is staying on top of the focus. There is very little depth of field with that lens at f/5.6 so it's important to reestablish focus after each shot. The short depth of field gives the background a nice glow and because the background is flat it bounces the light right back at you. The only real problem was that I was using a scrap and it was only about 4 foot square so I had to work to keep it behind the subject. Hey what the hell if it's not a little hard it's not really art. Tech Stuff Key light was a soft box about 3 feet from the subject. The background was 6 feet behind the subject and the camera was about 4 feet from the subject. There was also an umbrella on the right that was a working as a fill light . The lighting style was cross and the ratio was darn near 1 to 1