Robert A F van de Voort
19 Kyle Road
ALBANY
Auckland, New Zealand.

Email: robert@AlbanyStudios.co.nz
Website: www.AlbanyStudios.co.nz
Telephone: +64 9 4156561

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How to shoot a simple commercial assignment with only 2 lights.

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And when you see the amount of writing maybe it is not that easy as you think, is it?  Please read on...

The purpose of this lighting workshop demonstration is threefold.  It illustrates clearly how light travels, secondly, it illustrates reflections and thirdly, it illustrates the only way to measure the light.
If you study this image carefully you can deduct many things to work out how this image is created, and why it is so effective with only two lights. 

My brief:
Make a photograph of pen in its holder and make it feel like “space”. 

The nature of the pen creates various problems.  It is reflective, the polished surfaces need to be illuminated in such a way that it reflects what we want to see.  A reflective surface will only show the colours it reflects, therefore careful positioning is required in order to maximise the effect of reflections.
If we are standing straight in front of the pen, the pen itself will reflect whatever is in front of it.  I need a white background in front of the pen so the pen itself will reflect a light colour.  In order to make the pen stand out against a background it would be easy as if we have a black background. 

Essentially this could be all we have to do, but the photograph would look a little boring just with one light.  Therefore, I have added one effect light, and that effect light creates a little sparkle on top of the translucent plastic on top of the pen. 

The little bling on top of the penl creates relief and some bright color, the same light from the back creates a lovely little rim light on the edges at the top of the base of the pen holder.  This rim light is also an essential tool to distinguish between the background and the pen holder, without it the colours would quickly merge into one another, in this way the rim light creates additional depth.
Reflective surfaces reflect their surroundings, and this setup is purely created with this in mind.  The base of the pencil holder is brushed aluminium, a light grey substance. 
If we photograph this unit with one light positioned directly underneath the pen holder - the bottom will be quite brightly lit and reflect the white base on which it stands. 
However, the three legs of the penl holder do not reflect anything on the top, they reflect nothing but black. The difference in shading on these three legs make the legs look round.(see final image)
The pen itself would reflect on the left and the right-hand side black because there was nothing surrounding the penl.  That is why I placed a white reflector board on either side of the pen to reflect the light that came from the back snoot back onto the pen and not only that, the light from underneath the pen was also partially reflected back from both reflector boards and back onto the pen. 
If you look closely at the front of the pen you can detect a faint darker grey line in the centre.  This darker grey line in the front of the pencil is the absence of the reflection from both reflector boards on either side of the pen.
Okay, now we know all this, how are we going to set it up?

The base is a sheet of opaque Perspex measuring approximately one metre by sixty centimetres.  This sheet of Perspex is specifically cut to size, I have created one metal aluminium frame, and on each side of the frame I have attached one sheet of Perspex.  So, in effect, you are looking at two sheets of Perspex separated by about one centimetre of space in between.  This allows for optimum diffusion, the light will spread evenly out when you do this compared to one single sheet of opaque Perspex (it would create a sharper outlined illuminated circle of light). 
If you do use opaque Perspex, I suggest you use a thickness of about three millimetres minimum.  Anything less is too thin, of course you could try thicker Perspex as that may give you a similar effect to what I have achieved here.
This Perspex frame was placed on two supports, the height was sufficient to place a flash head underneath.  I have selected a light with a honeycomb attached in front of the flash head. This is my main light, and is situated right underneath the pen holder.  The reflector is fairly wide, and the light can spread evenly around in a circle with the honeycomb attached to it.

The light itself was slightly angled toward the camera in order to create an elliptical sphere of light.  This elliptical sphere of light would be sufficiently large in front of the pen holder to reflect back onto the pencil to give it it's visibility.  As you can see from the placing of the honeycomb, the pencil was placed quite closely to the back edge of the honeycombed reflector underneath, so most of the light was actually in front of the pencil holder. This allows the reflection on to the pencil to be so effective.  If I did not utilise a honeycomb on the reflector, the light would bounce out of the reflector on so many different angles that it can not create a circle of light onto the Perspex quite likely it would illuminate most of the Perspex sheet without the illusion of a circle. 

The other reason for using a honeycomb is that I do not want any other light sources around the pen holder. I want only to reflect light where I want it, and if I have no light immediately surrounding my pen and pen holder I will only reflect black onto it. You can check this when you look at the blue painted area of the pen holder - all the edges are in black because they do not reflect anything but the black space surrounding it. You can get many different sized reflectors, just select the one that fits the shape you want. If you take a very wide or big reflector size the curvature behind the pen holder would be very slight and not noticeable, the smaller the reflector the more curvature would be visible, and as long as you can create a light source in front of the pen holder that is sufficiently large to reflect back onto the pen entirely, you are fine.

After we have placed the main light underneath the pen holder we can now proceed to the effect light onto the top of the pen.  The circular honeycomb reflector dish on my flash head would be fine if it was a very narrow one.  I do not have a very narrow one, I only had a very small square snoot, approximately 15 centimetres by 15 centimetres.  I placed this about seventy-five centimetres behind the pen holder, and slightly higher than the pen. 
I aimed it so it would illuminate only the top of the pencil holder but not all the way down onto the Perspex, because that would interfere with the circle of light from the light underneath. This is all I had to do in order to be  effective with this light onto the pen and holder. As the “effect” snoot light was placed directly in front of the lens but out of its direct line of sight (higher) the flare and contrast is highest. Any position towards the left or right would minimize its effect.

The compendium (lenshood) on the camera lens protected the lens from stray light, at these light angles it is very easy to degrade the image contrast with flare. See the last image of the set up, no lenshood - lots of flare and image degradation, taken a little lower than the actual original camera position. You can see on the very top (rhs) just the support for the camera.

There was just a little problem remaining, the pen holder itself (the blue painted areas) were still a little dark especially on the top and front. Since there was nothing to reflect light back onto the front of the pen holder, I had to create a reflective surface that would bounce the light that came from underneath the Perspex back onto the pen holder, to give it more detail and visibility. 
A golden (I have no silver one!) coloured reflector was placed above the Perspex table just high enough to be out of the view of the camera.  It was angled forward toward the camera lens, otherwise it would reflect light backwards behind the pen holder and spoil the effect of the circular light from underneath.  The combination of the light that came from underneath and the light that was reflected from the golden reflector back onto the pen holder was sufficient to create enough ambience and visibility.  Remember that the golden reflector would also reflect light back onto the front of the Perspex in front of the pen holder as this was the next effective light source to light up the pen holder and pen only.

Everything looked fine at this stage, but since the pen holder was a very highly reflective blue surface and the lights reflecting back onto the pencil and pencil holder were all fairly diffused, there were no specular  highlights indicating it was highly reflective, (A specular highlight is the bright spot of the light itself that appears on shiny objects when illuminated).  To create a specular highlight you need a defined light source. My shaving mirror was positioned in front of the pen holder (see diagram), slightly lower than the pen, and in such a position it reflected the light back from the snoot behind the pen and back onto the front of the pen holder. 

If you position yourself at the position of the camera lens, it is very quick and easy to create the correct position of the mirror to make this effect possible. Your eyes have to be in the same position as the lens, otherwise it is impossible to ascertain the correct position of the reflector (mirror).  This highly defined specular highlight across the middle of the blue part of the pen holder was sufficient enough to give it the "bling" to finalise the setup.

All we have to do now was the light metering to arrive at the correct setting of shutter speed and aperture. 
Perhaps here we will learn another essential method of light metering.  It is very easy to work out what will photograph as white and what will photograph as black.  A grey card will not bring any relief in this situation, we will have to measure in the reflective mode, not the incident meter mode. 

Take the invercone off your light meter so the lens of the light meter is visible, and aim the lens at the brightest part of the Perspex, in this case it is the area just underneath the pen holder.  A reflective light meter reading indicates a reading of F-64.  If I set this as my aperture on the camera I would get a grey Perspex surface, like the grey card of 18 percent reflection.  I want it white, therefore I open up my aperture three stops, the aperture now becomes F-22.

When I measure the light from the snoot, that is, the light falling onto the top of the pencil, measure it at the spot where the red top of the pencil is. In this case I measured it in incident meter mode and it read F-22.  Since I wanted that light to be slightly brighter, and the perspex really to look like an overexposed white I opened the aperture half a stop to F-18, that is halfway between F-16 and F-22.  To make sure that I had a black background behind the pen, I aimed my light meter in the reflected light meter mode (that is without the dome over the lens of the light meter) onto the (black looking) Perspex behind the pen holder and took a reading.  This light reading was F-5.6.

The aperture value set on my camera was F-18, and an aperture of F-5.6  Is three and a half stops below that chosen aperture and therefore it will not record anything onto the film or sensor.

I will explain that; if you have taken an incident meter reading of something and set that aperture value on your camera, any light source that records three stops more than in the reflected light meter mode is too much (bright) to be visible onto film or sensor and will show up as white.

Any light source that records less than three stops in the relected light meter mode than the aperture value settling your camera will not be visible, therefore it will be black. I can say it in other words, think of you grey card, 18 percent reflective grey value. 
One stop more is 36 percent, that means a lighter grey.
One stop more is 72 percent, that means a lighter grey again, very light grey.
One stop more light is  144 percent (essentially impossible!), that is very very very light grey, it is actually white.

If you go the other way around;
One stop less light than 18 percent grey reflective value is 9 percent, and that is a darker grey tone.
One stop less light is 4.5 percent reflective grey and that is an even darker tone, grey, very dark. 
One stop less light is two percent grey reflective value, and we can consider that as black.

If you really want to be very accurate when you take light readings and assure yourself of the tonal values of objects in your images, a spot meter will very accurately determine the reflective light values in terms of the Zone system, it is very easy once you get your head around it. And that is not easy…

Essentially this is all that I did in order to achieve this simple and easy photograph of a pen and pen holder.  If you do not have a golden reflector, a sheet of white polystyrene above the pen holder would be sufficient to create a similar effect. 

For me, this simple setup essentially illustrates the main ingredients of light control, reflection control, translucency and camera viewpoint – all of the most basic ingredients of understanding how to work with light. Photography! 

Set-up and photography time was 25 minutes, Raw file, no adjustments made to image in Photoshop at all.

I have not really explained the camera viewpoint. If  the camera viewpoint was not slightly higher than the pencil, the pencil would not have been able to reflect the light in front of it.  The moment I lower my camera it will reflect less foreground, it means less light on the pen and it will get darker on top of the pen. 

You can see this at the faint dark grey centre line on top of the pen. Just below the translucent red plastic top of the pencil, the dark grey line is getting darker and you can see that grey line getting brighter as it reaches lower toward the Perspex sheet on which it sits.

I hope this explanation on how to expose this pen will allow you to take your abilities to set up other assignments further. If you understand what lights do, if you understand what reflections do, if you understand that the camera angle is crucial to catch reflections, then you are a photographer! 
And if you do not understand it, just blame me for not writing and explaining it in simple language.

Enjoy your photography! © Robert A F van de Voort 2006 Albany Studios
All rights reserved. Do not reproduce this article in any form without written permission.
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