How much power for table top work?
Lighting a cylinder
Hot spots on bottles
Long kitchen interior lighting
Detail in pillow covers

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I have never shot table top commercial work, but I always hear about how much light it takes to do so. I am ignorant on this subject so could someone please help me understand why it takes so much light to shoot table top product photographs? Needed depth of field? Extremely slow film?
Tom

Hi Tom:
Small product photography actually requires very little power if you know how to boss your lights around. The reason you hear about commercial photographers using so much power is because many of their jobs are done on 4 X 5 cameras and larger. These larger cameras with lens apertures far smaller than medium format cameras require more light to achieve the desired depth of field.
Now, to cheat a little, you can do table top photography (still life or product work) with very little strobe power at all. You simply do multiple pops and add them up to get the F stop you desire. For example. Let's say that your product setup is finished and your meter reading indicates a taking aperture of F5.6 because you only have a small power pack. The F stop you desire that will give you the depth of field you are looking for is say, F11. To reach F11, you will have to turn your modeling lights off and make sure that your room is quite dark. Now, with your shutter open, flash your strobes manually. One pop will achieve the F5.6 that the meter indicated . Two pops will get you to F8, and to get to F11 you will have to double what you have done so far, which would be two more pops for a total of 4 pops. Now close your shutter down, turn the lights on and advance the camera to the next frame.
With this procedure, you can achieve any F stop you desire. The only drawback is the inconvenience of sitting there in the dark pressing the test button every few seconds making sure that you are counting the correct number of pops.
Another way to achieve any F stop you desire is to not use strobes at all. Each month I do a large commercial job for a company with many different products. These particular items require a lot of depth of field in order to look correct. I have to shoot these items at F22. Rather than use the strobes and do multiple pops, I use tungsten balanced film and nothing more than my modeling lights which of course are tungsten. I take my readings and use long exposures ranging from 15 seconds to 90 seconds. The detail in the product is tremendous and my client is dancing every time they get their images. In two years, they have never been less than delighted with my images. Power is great if you have to freeze people while jumping in mid air by a pickup truck. It makes life easier in many large scale situations but when you don’t have the power, it’s nice to know that by using your brain just a little, you can still do pretty much anything you desire.

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I have a job coming up to do some product photography. The item I will be shooting is a stainless steel cylinder about 1.5 inches in diameter and about 5 inches long.
I was hoping for some advice on how to light this object and be able to control highlights and reflections so that it appear evenly lit. The object will be buffed so it will have a satin finish.
Mike

Dear Mike:
Your job is really a simple one. I will assume that the cylinder will be standing up vertical. An object that is shiny is said to have high surface efficiency. It reflects much of the light that strikes it very much like a mirror. Your job is to use this knowledge to your advantage. It is just those reflective qualities that you will use. In order to show the shape and form of the object you must fill up a large percentage of the surface of the object with a light source. To fill up such a large part of a round object like this you will need a large light source that is located very close to the object. The closer the light source is to the object the larger it will appear from the subjects point of view. The light source could be a diffusion panel which will give you the most control or it could be a larger soft box used quite close to the object.
Place the panel or box on one side of the object and a large (similar size) white reflector such as a piece of white foam core on the other side of the object. Look through the camera and adjust the light and the reflector to fill up the object with light. Your light and reflector will extend from the side of the object to very near the camera if you wish to fill up most of the object. The center of the cylinder will remain dark where the camera is. Using light sources at greater distances will increase the brightness of the highlights. For this reason, use the lights and reflector very near to the object. As close as you can without them being seen by the camera. This will keep the brightness of the highlights low, showing nicely the true look of the object you are lighting.

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I photograph bottles, and over time am getting fairly good at it, however one thing that bothers me is the 'spot light' glare on the necks of bottles. Is there anyway to eliminate this? I just tried an opaque panel with the lights behind it, but got a large softer white square on the bottle. Would umbrellas or reflectors work? Do you point the light away from the subject and reflect light back at subject?? I have asked all kinds of pros up here, and they all say use no glare spray, studio lighting etc., but my business is operated in a room with only 8 ft ceilings and I refuse to think that I can not solve this problem. The photos I take are published in auction catalogs and work ok, but I am now making calendars in full color and am tired of having to computer adjust for the spots and other photo problems. Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Robin

Dear Robin:
The spots on the bottles you are referring to are what’s called specular reflections. The word specular means “mirror like”. They are reflected images of the light source. If you switch to umbrellas you will get nice reflections of your umbrellas. You need to tackle the problem scientifically. First, you need to understand that you cannot get rid of reflections unless you get rid of your lights. Since you cannot do that, you will have to modify the light source and learn a little about how to control the way that light appears on your reflective subject. The relative brightness of the reflections can be referred to as specular density. What you wish to do is to reduce the specular density. Many young photographers are astounded to learn that you must work with your light in closer to the subject in order to reduce the specular density. You must also work with larger light sources. Large soft boxes are ok for such jobs but I prefer the more controllable diffusion panel. This is a free standing panel with translucent white material on it such as rip stop nylon. Your light source is placed behind the panel so as to light a large area of the panel that is near your subject. With a light source such as this on one side of your subject and very close (perhaps less than 18 inches) you will have very large specular highlights but they will be very low in density. Far more pleasing to the eye and you don’t need dulling spray. If you use a large diffusion panel on one side of your bottle and a large piece of white foam core or other firm white material just as close and on the other side, you will have a lighting situation very similar to what many professionals use to photograph bottles.
You didn’t say but if your bottles have liquid in them, but if they do, you can light up the liquid quite easily by making a cardboard cutout that is about the same shape as the bottle but just a little smaller. Apply some of the silver reflective material that is used to tint your cars windows to this shape with spray glue and prop it up behind your bottle at an angle so as to reflect the large panel through the bottle and toward the camera. This is a common trick that we use to bring added color and light through the sometimes very dark glass.

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Dear Scott,
I took some photographs of the interior of a kitchen last Friday. The kitchen is about 18' long (corridor-type). As you know, there is considerable fall-off in illumination from foreground to background. I don't see a good place to conceal a slave flash. Any suggestions for lighting this room with a more even lighting? Would it be possible to put my main (umbrella) strobe down to half or quarter power, then position a second strobe at full power with a directional grill and/or barn doors? Maybe I should try remodeling faces rather than kitchens.
Doug Reymore
Seattle

Hi Doug
First, lets bring up depth of field. For a long shot down a kitchen like this you need a huge amount of depth of field to keep everything in usable focus. Using strobes will only make your shoot more difficult because of the need for lots of depth of field which of course requires quite a bit of power. You indicated that there is no place to put auxiliary lighting at the far end of the room so what can you do? The answer is actually pretty simple. Use practical lighting. That is to say the lighting that is already
in the room that was put there to light it. It will look much more natural using the light that is already there. You simply switch to VPL or other tungsten balanced film, and work at night using a tungsten flood light into an umbrella or bouncing off a white wall
or ceiling near the camera to keep the shadows from going too dark. You can even use a light with a snoot located near the camera to get more fill light down toward the end of the room and less near the camera so the fill is not obvious. (Be careful to watch for specular reflections from your light source on tile or other smooth surfaces).You sort of shoot it toward the end of the room without lighting up the near ground objects. Oh, about that depth of field problem. Now that you are doing a still life of your room using long exposures, you can pretty much select the aperture you want and just do longer exposures. It's always wise to bracket on something like this because the film is a lot cheaper than setting up to do it again.
With this method, you have all the depth of field you need and everything is the correct color and the room looks natural. Good examples of practical lighting can be seen in the corridors on Star Trek The Next Generation. Except for a little fill over the camera, all the lighting is the practical lighting that you see along the corridors.
Now for an alternative. Let's say that you wish to do this in the daytime and allow natural light to come in the windows. Now what? Well, no huge problem. Just substitute blue photo floods for the tungsten bulbs in any globes or other fixtures in the room and everything will be the same color. You can now use daylight film.
If you have bulbs that cannot be replaced with blue photo floods you will have to decide if doing the shot at night using tungsten film might be better. If you wish you can add a couple of tungsten flood lights outside the windows to simulate the sun for a natural look. You could also place diffusion panels outside the windows with the floods for a softer effect that still looks like it's daylight outside. Just meter inside the room near the window where the light strikes a counter top or other item and adjust so it's a stop or so more than the overall room exposure. This will suggest a higher level of light coming in from the window.

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I have to shoot a lot of white pillow covers. What is a good way to shoot in BW and colour? Do I need to over expose and under develop for BW film to get details in
high lights? How about colour film? Is white background a good idea?
Your truly,
Masood

Dear Masood
You may photograph white pillow covers with b & w film or color. It makes no difference. I personally prefer color for this sort of thing. The differences are in your technique, not the film type. You don't need to overexpose and under develop or anything else. If you don't have a problem, let’s not make one. This is about photography and lighting, not film or equipment. You create and show texture and detail by using your lights creatively and firing them across the material from a low angle and by not using excessive fill light. You can also use a smaller light source rather than a large light source such as a soft box. You want to create shadow and texture to show the product. Another technique you can use is to fire your smaller main light through some wooden lattice work to create alternating highlights and shadows. This is a common technique used by commercial photographers. It makes the lighting far more exciting than just blasting solid light onto your subject. You can photograph the covers on a white sheet but why not try a colored sheet or one with a pattern? That way you can focus your attention on the lighting technique of the white material and not have to worry so much about the rest.
Good luck with your shoot.

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