If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
leather products - lighting problems
Hello!
I'm doing some photos of wallets and purses that primarily will be viewed in an online catalog, but may also be used in print. The lighter colored leather seems to coming out OK, but the brown and black leather is coming out like a solid dark blotch. Is there some trick to lighting this that won't cause tons of glare off of the leather while bringing out the leather itself? you can take a look here http://petros.pl/Galleries/Sagan/index.html Thanks in advance! -- Petros Ap' ola prin ipirche o Logos |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
"Petros" wrote
Hello! I'm doing some photos of wallets and purses that primarily will be viewed in an online catalog, the brown and black leather is coming out like a solid dark blotch. http://petros.pl/Galleries/Sagan/index.html The big versions look fine. The thumbnails are pretty bad. Suggestions: o Polish the leather to get a bit more gloss/shine o Overexpose and fiddle with the black level so that the thumbnails show a dark-grey rather than a black. o Increase the contrast in blacks, decrease it in the whites (you don't have any whites but the background, after all). o Don't use white as a background, use a dark red or brown. o Look at photographs on the web for your competitor's wallets and see how other photographers have solved the problem. -- Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics. Remove spaces etc. to reply: n o lindan at net com dot com psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/ |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Nicholas O. Lindan posted:
The big versions look fine. The thumbnails are pretty bad. Suggestions: o Polish the leather to get a bit more gloss/shine o Overexpose and fiddle with the black level so that the thumbnails show a dark-grey rather than a black. o Increase the contrast in blacks, decrease it in the whites (you don't have any whites but the background, after all). o Don't use white as a background, use a dark red or brown. o Look at photographs on the web for your competitor's wallets and see how other photographers have solved the problem. Thanks for the suggestions! I agree that a different background would be good, but the white is at the request of the customer. I think they want to be able to easily cut out the wallets from the background later. I will ask permission to polish the leather. I have looked at some good sites with wallets, and the black ones tend to come out either pretty similar or have more reflected light on them which: 1) helps to bring out texture but... 2) doesn't look very attractive. Luckily the gallery you saw is not the final gallery, just a quick gallery to let my employer (I'm just snapping the photos for the web designer) see the effect, so the thumbnails aren't a big issue for me. Thanks for your advice! -- Petros Ap' ola prin ipirche o Logos |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
On Thursday 07 October 2004 03:01, Petros wrote:
I'm doing some photos of wallets and purses that primarily will be viewed in an online catalog, but may also be used in print. The lighter colored leather seems to coming out OK, but the brown and black leather is coming out like a solid dark blotch. Is there some trick to lighting this that won't cause tons of glare off of the leather while bringing out the leather itself? you can take a look here http://petros.pl/Galleries/Sagan/index.html You've got a good, overall, general lighting set up. Now all you need to add is additional illumination from the extreme sides of the wallets and purses (They are called "kickers.") either by using small, narrowly focused lights or small white or silver reflectors to skim across the surface to delineate the texture of the leather and highlight the edges. You will probably still need to digitally retouch the images some in post to get the most out of the shots, but there should be no need to adjust contrast, white point, black point, etc., if you've lit the subject properly. -- Stefan Patric |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Stefan Patric posted:
On Thursday 07 October 2004 03:01, Petros wrote: I'm doing some photos of wallets and purses that primarily will be viewed in an online catalog, but may also be used in print. The lighter colored leather seems to coming out OK, but the brown and black leather is coming out like a solid dark blotch. Is there some trick to lighting this that won't cause tons of glare off of the leather while bringing out the leather itself? you can take a look here http://petros.pl/Galleries/Sagan/index.html You've got a good, overall, general lighting set up. Now all you need to add is additional illumination from the extreme sides of the wallets and purses (They are called "kickers.") either by using small, narrowly focused lights or small white or silver reflectors to skim across the surface to delineate the texture of the leather and highlight the edges. You will probably still need to digitally retouch the images some in post to get the most out of the shots, but there should be no need to adjust contrast, white point, black point, etc., if you've lit the subject properly. Thank you for the ideas. I'll try to see if I can get a hold of some more lights. If you saw the way I lit this, you'd laugh I only have the shoe mounted flash (EF-500 DG Super), so I had to get creative with reflecting my light. I hung a cork bulletin board over my workspace and from the left side I hung a large piece of white paper. I set up a couple of pieces of A3 paper to the right to reflect back onto the wallets. I aimed the flash up towards the joint between the cork board and paper with the flash's diffuser. The cork color warmed the overall tone enough to be pleasing, so I didn't cover the cork with paper. At that point it was just a question of experimenting with exposure times. Thanks again for you advice. -- Petros Ap' ola prin ipirche o Logos |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
"Petros" wrote
If you saw the way I lit this, you'd laugh I only have the shoe mounted flash (EF-500 DG Super), so I had to get creative with reflecting my light. I hung a cork bulletin board over my workspace and from the left side I hung a large piece of white paper. I set up a couple of pieces of A3 paper to the right to reflect back onto the wallets. I aimed the flash up towards the joint between the cork board and paper with the flash's diffuser. The cork color warmed the overall tone enough to be pleasing, so I didn't cover the cork with paper. At that point it was just a question of experimenting with exposure times. That's the way to do it. I use Luxo lamps, 4x6" notecards, lumps of modeling clay, bits of foil, rolled black paper for snoots ... I prefer using incandescent light and a blue filter. That way I can use any household lamp that comes to hand. -- Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics. Remove spaces etc. to reply: n o lindan at net com dot com psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/ |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Petros writes:
I'm doing some photos of wallets and purses that primarily will be viewed in an online catalog, but may also be used in print. The lighter colored leather seems to coming out OK, but the brown and black leather is coming out like a solid dark blotch. Is there some trick to lighting this that won't cause tons of glare off of the leather while bringing out the leather itself? you can take a look here http://petros.pl/Galleries/Sagan/index.html Thanks in advance! What you need are *some* reflections. Here's how you get them, and how you control them: Find the range of angles within which the leather will offer back a reflection. Now, set up a small sheet of reflector to fill however much of that angle you want to have some reflection on, and light that sheet to the level that will give you the reflection you want. Or make some sort of pattern on it. Or whatever you want. Also, when you've done this, you can adjust the black point a bit differently, so the darker bits of the leather become really black, but are saved from being a black hole by the reflections. That'll give the pictures a bit of snap, keep them from looking washed out. -- David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com/ http://www.dd-b.net/carry/ Pics: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/ http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/ Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/ |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
I'm doing some photos of wallets and purses that primarily will be viewed in an online catalog, but may also be used in print. The lighter colored leather seems to coming out OK, but the brown and black leather is coming out like a solid dark blotch. Is there some trick to lighting this that won't cause tons of glare off of the leather while bringing out the leather itself? you can take a look here http://petros.pl/Galleries/Sagan/index.html when photographing black you want a huge soft diffuse hightlight that you expose for. black is black, texture is revealed in the highlight. So in a sense, you WANT glare. Normally glare is a blocked up highlight that kills detail, but with black textured items its the only thing that shows it. to break up the reflected hightlight, take a piece of black tape across your light source or reflector. |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
I'm doing some photos of wallets and purses that primarily will be viewed in an online catalog, but may also be used in print. The lighter colored leather seems to coming out OK, but the brown and black leather is coming out like a solid dark blotch. Is there some trick to lighting this that won't cause tons of glare off of the leather while bringing out the leather itself? you can take a look here http://petros.pl/Galleries/Sagan/index.html when photographing black you want a huge soft diffuse hightlight that you expose for. black is black, texture is revealed in the highlight. So in a sense, you WANT glare. Normally glare is a blocked up highlight that kills detail, but with black textured items its the only thing that shows it. to break up the reflected hightlight, take a piece of black tape across your light source or reflector. |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
Thank you all for the great advice! I've done the best I could for this
shoot with the equipment that I have at the moment, and the customer is happy. Your comments will help me with future work, and they give me some idea of what equipment I'm going to need to make things work better in the future. -- Petros Ap' ola prin ipirche o Logos |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Focal plane vs. leaf shutters in MF SLRs | KM | Medium Format Photography Equipment | 724 | December 7th 04 10:58 AM |
Canon 300D - focus problems | Martin Wildam | Digital Photography | 31 | September 22nd 04 09:41 PM |
Nikon D70 colour problems | David Kilpatrick | Digital Photography | 7 | July 15th 04 12:04 PM |
Theme : identifY chemical products/ graphic arts, photo-lithography,alternative techniques. | Albane | In The Darkroom | 3 | June 20th 04 01:52 AM |
Home studio Shadowless lighting on a budget - help | Randy MacKenna | General Photography Techniques | 3 | December 6th 03 03:26 AM |