Using modifiers to light a Coloured Water Bottle
The main point with the following lighting techniques is that this is about the quality of the light.
I know from my earlier research that there are 6 Characteristics of lighting and they are:
- Quality
- Direction
- Contrast
- Un-evenness
- Colour
- Intensity
This refers to the type of shadows cast by an object/person, they can be hard and harsh or soft and graduated and they depend on the light source being used.
Direct sunlight creates hard, clear cut shadows as can a small flash-gun, torch or spotlight.
There are 4 different modifiers that i need to use for this part of my brief:
2. Using a bottle of water (preferably a coloured bottle!), employ the use of the following modifiers; honeycomb, soft-box (masked), beauty dish and umbrella.
I decided to do a little research into typical ways of lighting a glass bottle for commercial use, Andy did do a workshop with the perfume bottle but i wanted to look at the various ways myself too.
I found this website which John had also given to us when he gave us the Objects brief
http://www.drinks.packshotfactory.co.uk/?gclid=CPTWoYfxy54CFaBb4wodnjZpsA
On this website there are a lot of commercial images of highly reflective objects, mainly bottles.
I have also included small amount of research in my course folder from when i have seen something i thought was relevant. This can be found in the Systems & Processes section.
This website i found very useful as it shows examples and explains how to light glass- i think it is very simple and easy to understand although the setups are maybe a little complex for me at the moment, i feel i need to start with the basics.
I am aware that no one really wants to click on lots of links when reading my blog, it is easier for the reader to just see the information on the blog so below are some of the examples from this website:
http://www.lowel.com/edu/lesson_lighting_glass.html
Lit using a single light with Umbrella ~ Lit using ambient light in the room
The lighting setup here is the equivalent of a giant softbox- this process is known
as masking and is one of the modifiers i will use for this brief.
I also found a video which is quite useful and straight to the point:
After doing the studio sessions with my glass bottle i now find myself looking at pictures in magazines and online, where there is anything made from glass such as bottles of alcohol or perfume i can't help but stare at the picture looking where the highlights are and trying to work out how they did it.
I booked the studio and firstly, i found it much easier this time as i was becoming used to setting up the lights and using the equipment in the studio.
Honeycomb
I knew from lighting the pear in the studio that honeycomb wouldn't make the most flattering of lights for my product but it is part of the brief that i do this so... I set up the two lights both with honeycomb filters on, there are different types of honeycomb you can get and in the studio we had 3 different ones- the holes in the filter were of varying sizes and the smaller/larger the holes changes how diffuse the light is.
I did plan to take photographs using all 3 filters but in the end i had spent that long in the studio it was getting ridiculous, so i had do draw the line somewhere as i cant learn everything at once- this will be something for another day.
My lights were placed at the front of the product table both roughly at around 45 degrees.
F8, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
Here only one of the flash's have triggered as you can see from the single highlight on the bottle.
F8. 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
I made sure the infrared was turned on and tried again, both flash have fired here and the result is an over-exposed image, at this point i didnt have access to a light meter which is why i was trying to meter the light myself:
F11, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
Here i have stopped the aperture down to F11 and this is an improvement but it is still over-exposed.
F22, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
Here i have taken the F number right to 22 which now, if i am honest seems like i have gone from one extreme to the other and ended up with an under exposed image, the highlights cover up the label too, i realise that this part of the brief is about learning more about the appropriate lighting techniques for certain things, in this case i wouldn't say that honeycomb is useful at all for lighting a glass bottle, certainly not set up like this.
I was interested to see if i can find a way to make this light work better by moving it around and experimenting a little.
So i moved the light on the left around to the side at the back of the bottle and turned off the one on the right.
F11, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
This has created a large green reflection and shadow to the right but is better than the previous shot in a sense, as the lable is more visible.
The right is quite dark so i decided to use a reflector on the right of the bottle to try and fill in some light and create more of a highlight on the front of the bottle:
F11, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
After this i decided to use two lights again so switched on the one that was on the right and left it in the same position.
F11, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
This definitely worked better than the reflector and has created a much more even light.
With a light source such as this it is difficult to create an effective photograph of a glass bottle, i think we have been given this in the brief so that we learn that there are no right or wrongs technically but it doesnt half make life hard trying to create a good photograph with this light source im sure there would be a better way to use these lights for a better effect but it wouldn't be ideal for a glass bottle and would take a lot of experimenting.
So this light source may be useful for things such as 45/45 lighting with the pear as if gave a direct enough light to create an obvious shadow, but for the bottle, it isn't the best as it is too direct in a sense, it is also difficult to control the higlights unlike with the masked soft box.
Soft-box (Masked)
I setup two soft-box lights, one on either side of the product table and put them level with my bottle of water and tilted them at an angle of roughly 45 degrees.
The brief states to use a soft-box but leaves it open how many so i decided to keep things symmetrical i would use two, i also thought this would look much better on the bottle.
Another thing that the brief doesnt stipulate is whether or not other lights should be used in conjuction with the soft box, so i will see what the results are and may use additional lights if necessary.
This is a reference photo to show the setup.
F5.6, 1/60 Sec, ISO 400, handheld, un-edited.
For the previous reference photo i used the Automatic mode on my camera and when i put it back onto manual to take the above photo the flash was still up and it had this effect, the soft boxes didn't trigger and the photo was taken with the camera flash alone, so you can see the poor image that came from this.
F14, 1/125 Sec, ISO 100, handheld, unedited.
After sorting the problem i took this photo- much better than the previous one!!
Same as above, just a different viewpoint
I wanted to show a close up of of the bottle, you can see here the highlights that were made on the bottle by the two softboxes, at this point i hadn't masked them.
Whilst doing this in the studio i was trying to stick to the brief and experiment with different set-ups but also i kept in mind that this was technically product photography. When photographing a product you should be able to clearly see the label, and in my opinion the Photographers job is to show the product at its absolute best.
Next i used a piece of black cloth and taped it to the soft box leaving a small section of the softbox exposed as this is what would create the highlight down the side of the bottle.
This is a reference photo to show the masked softbox
F5.6, 1/125 Sec, ISO 100, handheld, un-edited.
Notice the difference on the bottle- the shape of the highlight is now a thin line that runs down the left edge, compared to the previous shots where there are two thick highlights on the bottle that distracted away from the label.
F5.6, 1/125 Sec, ISO 100, handheld, un-edited.
Here i have added a back light behind the product table because the background was too dark, this is still underexposed in places. I also dont like how uneven it is and think it would be improved by adding a further light on the right hand side.
I did have problems with the back light not triggering, i learnt that the reason for this can be that the power isnt high enough on the main flash where the sync lead is plugged into. A way to solve this problem is to plug the sync lead into a different light and also check the infra red is switched on as this is what sends the signal from one light to the next in order for it to flash.
F5.6, 1/125 Sec, ISO 400, handheld, un-edited.
I have increased the ISO to 400 here as the previous shot was under exposed . Im not happy with the distracting shadow on the right side, so i am going to use two masked softboxes to try and decrease the shadow.
Here is the reference photo to show the setup
F5.6, 1/60 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
This is the first photo i took with both masked softboxes, the highlights are a little distracting and slightly cover the label, especially on the left side where it totally covers the P and almost the 2nd letter too, not great for product photography.
I decided to move the bottle forward a little so that both of the soft boxes were further back and therefore hopefully the highlights would be further around the sides rather than conflicting with the label on the bottle.
F5.6, 1/60 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
Here i have moved the bottle forward a little which means the highlights are slightly more toward the back and less on the label. I think this works a lot better and the histogram is good too, stopping just short of the right so no clipping.
I wanted to try to replicate the setup that Andy showed us with the Perfume bottle to see if this worked any better and also to try out other things.
In the studio Andy had used a product table and underneath this he put a light, there was also a softbox above the product and was angled toward the front, where the camera would be taking the photo from (this is a typical setup used in product photography) there were also two large black poystyrene boards, one put at either side of the table and this would absorb some of the light.
Here is the setup Andy did for the perfume bottle, it is very dark but you can just make out the two boards at either side of the table and the light above and below, i have just realised from properly looking at this that the lights he used were continuous flourescent lights, this does give a diffferent effect to the lights i used but this is maybe something i can try at a later date.
And here is my setup for the bottle, you can tell straight away the difference between the two lights as one is very cold and the other is warm.
F5.6, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
This is over exposed as you can see, so i have increased the Fstop shutting down the aperture by one stop:
F6.3, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
You can see here this is quite over-exposed still.
I moved the bottle around a lot and took many different photos from different angles as it made quite a difference, when photographing down on the bottle i got quite a different shot to when i photographed on a level with the bottle.
I cant put all of my photo's on here as i took hundreds in the studio sessions but this is reflected in the contact sheets i have included in my course folder in the Systems and Processes section.
I was quite happy with the latest shots but the label was quite dark and i wanted to try to illuminate this a little, so i used a reflector.
Given the setup and the fact i was on my own in the studio i had to hold the reflector underneath my chin and try to angle it at the bottle whilst holding the camera up above the reflector to take the photograph! that would have made a very interesting shot if someone had seen me!
F6.3, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
You can see here the highlight on the front of the bottle covering the label. I think this is much better as it shows the detail in the label.
F6.3, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
Here i managed to get someone to help me and they used a black piece of card in front of the softbox, i directed them whilst looking at the bottle through the camera as the card needed to flag the light to pick out the detail on the lid, i did this again whilst holding the reflector underneath my chin.
This is something Andy showed us how to do with the perfume bottle, this photo shows how it is done:
F6.3, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, edited.
Here is another example of the bottle; using the reflector and the card it is very similar to the one above as it was using the same settings but i have edited it in Lightroom to remove the creases from the background sheet using the dust spot remover. I also used the angle tool to straighten it out as the bottle appeared slightly lob-sided. Nothing else has been edited as i wanted to keep the photo as original as possible to illustrate what can be done without editing.
I am happy with the overall photos i got from the soft box with the bottle, i think that when it is done simply using two softboxes the result is quite in-effective, as the highlights are too big and not specific enough so the masked soft box is definitely a more effective way of lighting a glass bottle. However; i found that the best result was from the top lighting i used with the soft box, and the light underneath, the light underneath penetrated the product table and travelled through the bottle and the light above washed the whole area with light meaning there were fewer unwanted reflections and the bottle almost 'sparkled' once i used a reflector to pick out the detail on the front of the bottle and a card to pick out the detail on the lid.
Looking at the last few images it looks like the light beneath the table may not have triggered, i might be wrong but the table does look darker toward the bottom of the image, i am a little disappointed as i dont have time to correct this at this late stage but i have definitely learnt a lot from the whole process and this will be somehthing i check more closely in future when in the studio.
Beauty Dish
The Beauty Dish gets its name because it is often used in beauty shots such as make up adverts.
I decided to look up Beauty Dish as although i have seen them before i didn't know much about them.
I found a website where someone had taken photos of the same object and used a beauty dish for one image and just flash for the other- to try to illustrate the use of the Beauty Dish:
Photos from Diyphotography.net
The one on the left has been taken with a beauty dish and the other just with flash, you can see the big difference between the two.
Here is a link to the page showing these pictures and also explaining how to make your own- home made beauty dish.
Picture from Diyphotography.net
I also found a picture showing how a softbox works which i found really useful, so with a soft box the light hits the reflective surface then is bounced back at the large outer 'dish' and then directed at the subject. It creates a ring of light because the small reflective surface in the middle points at the light source and away from the subject so this area is blacked out in a sense, this then creates a doughnut shaped catch light in the models eyes for example.
I also found another website which is a supplier of Beauty Dishes and shows examples of the different types and also explains the difference between each one.
F8, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
This is the first photo i took with the beauty dish, you can see the reflection of it in the bottle and the photo is over-exposed.
F8, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
Here is a better exposed example but you can see there is still an inappropriate highlight on the bottle that is very distracting.
For the next three photos i have moved the light so that it is not pointing directly at the front of the bottle and also i used three different apertures to try to get a properly exposed image.
F8, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
F7.1, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
F5.6, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
These shots no longer have the distracting highlight across the front of the bottle which is much better and the light appears more even than before, so moving the Beauty Dish made a big difference.
Beauty Dish Again
I wasn't satisified with the previous shots using the beauty dish so i decided to go into the studio again and experiment more by moving the light around.
I set up the light on the left at the back of the bottle:
F8, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
F8, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited
This is better exposed than the previous image and the reason for this is that i moved the light further up so it was pointing down at the bottle and this meant that the light has lit the front a little more and created a more even light so i am happy with this as far as Beauty Dish is concerned.
The fact is, beauty dish isn't really appropriate for lighting glass as it is the wrong shape firstly, it creates a ring of light which because the bottle and tables are reflective surfaces, if the light is positioned in most places you can see the catch light.
I think with the time that i had this is the best example i could come up with.
I do think that maybe if i had two beauty dishes it may have created a more even and effective light but it still wouldn't make the best of the bottle and produce specific highlights like the masked soft box did.
Umbrella
An umbrella is reasonably cheap and versatile. It can be used in many ways to diffuse the light.
The unbrellas we have in the studio have silver and white insides, the unwanted one can simply be taken off and put to one side and vice versa.
The silver creates a harsher light whereas the White creates a softer light, umbrellas come in different sizes and the bigger the umbrella, the softer the light is.
Here is an example of the different ones available:
So to try out the unbrellas i decided to setup one umbrella and positioned this on the right of the product table at roughly 45 degrees. The light you can see at the back on this photo was at this point was switched off.
This is a reference shot to show the setup
F7.1, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
I wasnt happy with the highlight on the above image as it was covering the label so i decided to move the umbrella further around the side of the table in an effort to control the highlight more.
F7.1, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
Here the highlight is slightly further to the right but i didn't move the Umbrella further enough, i also could have moved the bottle further forward instead.
This is a reference photo to show the next setup
I decided then to set up two umbrella's, at either side of the table one was placed toward the front and the other was nearer the back of the table on the other side.
F9, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
F9. 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
This has been taken from quite a high angle, look at the highlights on the bottle compared to this:
F9, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
F9, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, unedited.
Here i have moved the Umbrellas to the back of the product table so that the light is coming from behind the bottle, you can see now the front is quite shadowed although it does make it seem more 3D and appear to be seperate from the background, as opposed to blending in.
I then decided to take off the black and silver from the umbrellas and use the white as this creates a softer light, there is a technique which is to shoot through the umbrella so i wanted to try this:
F9, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
As you can see here, even after shooting through the umbrella it still creates a harsh highlight on the bottle.
So i decided i wanted the light to be more above my bottle and to 'wash' over it, so i turned the Umbrellas up toward the ceiling and placed them next to the table near the bottle on either side.
You can see my setup from this photo, Kevin found it quite amusing saying i had setup starship enterprise!:
Here is the setup
And here is the photograph produced from this lighting:
F9, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
Although the setup may have looked silly, it worked!
I also tried the same thing with a light underneath the product table to illuminate the bottom of the bottle:
F11, 1/125 Sec, ISO 200, handheld, un-edited.
I had to reduce the aperture to F11 as i was using an extra light, it is still slightly over exposed though.
I actually prefer the previous one as i think the bottle looks more defined. I did try editing this in Lightroom as it was very slightly over exposed, when i decreased the exposure the reflection of the umbrella in the shiny product table was visible, so in the end i decided this was best over exposed. I still think that the masked soft box was the best set up in terms of giving the bottle definition, but think this lighting was very good in evenly lighting the bottle and producing an image that didnt show any distracting reflections or inappropriate highlights.
I think a combination of one of the soft box images and one of the umbrella images would work quite well, this lead me to look into the next point, composite lighting.
From reading the Studio Photography book on the reading list i have learned that there are other ways to get the perfect lighting when photographing something such as a bottle.
Composite lighting is the combining of images to create a montage that encompasses all of the desired things.
So, for example if i photographed the bottle using the masked softbox's to ensure i had the highlights down each side and then used flagging to pick out the detail on the top of the bottle and where-ever necesssary, the issue i had here was that the front of the bottle wasn't lit enough so i had to use a reflector, but this made a specific highlight. Using Composite techniques it is possible to take several images and combine them using post production.
To do this the light on all of the images you use must appear to come from the same direction and also the bottle would have to be shot from the same place on a tripod and nothing else moved so that you can align them perfectly, i would like to try this at some point.
Main learning Outcomes
I have learnt so much from this studio session it is hard to think of everything but a few are:
- The use of all 4 modifiers- Umbrella, soft-box, beauty dish and honeycomb can vary in so many ways that there literally are thousands of setups you could try with just a few lights.
- Lighting a bottle is very different to lighting anything else such as people, because it is a reflective surface it needs totally different treatment and to bring out the best in it.
- A slight change in the angle you take a shot can have a massive impact on the image, i learnt this when doing the Umbrella shots.
Things to Improve/Learn
- Use a light meter at all times- it makes it quicker and easier.
- Always check my pictures whilst i am in the studio to make sure all the flash's fired properly.
- Put things on Blog as and when i do them, that gives me the chance to see what i have done
and if there are things that need to be done again.
- Don't try to do everything at once, some things take time and patience!
- Work on my Signature for my images, find a way to put them on in batch and use the same
one on all of my photographs.
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