Shiny stuff. a question for the product people

[cunim]

I have been trying to make visually interesting pictures of shiny objects, and failing miserably. Here, for example, is a shot of a pocket knife using an IQ180/Rodenstock 135 and monolith view camera. It is a single POF and lit by multiple strobes. The usual tactic with things like this is to use highly diffuse illumination which gives a nice smooth appearance, but doesn't really look like metal. I want the metal.

What's the secret?

 

[Mexecutioner]

The mokuti handle and damascus blade are going to be tough to make look shiny. Looking forward to reading suggestions from experienced forum members. Beautiful knife, btw

 

[John Black]

Have you tried lighting one side brighter than the other? Reflective metal is a PITA... it picks up reflections of everything in the studio.. Knowing that tiny metals will reflect all the mess in my studio (I know there are domes an such, but I'm lazy), sometimes I'll purposely put a black card in the shot to throw some reflection into the mix. In this case I didn't need to because the door to the room did the job just fine (pusher buttons) -

 

[John Black]

An example of playing with a hot / dark side - it's two soft boxes (left and right, right is the "hot" side). An overhead for some fill. A kicker light to knock out the background. For metal objects, a uniform L / R light tends to come up flat. With the Rm3di's angled sides, about 1.5 stops delta between the left and right put the highlight and the angled metal front side. The finish on the Gitzo tripod is kind of similar situation as the knife (the texture).

Shooting on reflective black is alot of work in my experience. I use white because I can bounce from shot to shot pretty quick. My only nemesis is white products on a white background

Curious to see what others suggest.

 

[John Black]

With regards to the light & dark sides, I put the shiny bits on the dark side because they'll pick up the highlights easily. Whereas the black metal could be blasted.

 

[John Black]

Hope you don't mind... goofed around in PS a bit - added ALOT of black back to the knife. Also "Selective Color" to play with amp'ing up the black and some colors. It's a different way to go about saturation. I tried add blue to the blade for a "cold steel" vibe. Not so sure about that choice.

 

[cunim]

Looks like we've got a discussion going. I like the idea of adding "texture" to the light sources. The lights on the first knife are a pair of umbrellas (above, side) and a 2x 3 soft box (side). I'll grid up the soft box and see what happens. Here's some shiny metal with strobes bouncing off a set of metal girders in a white roof. That worked well. Let's see if it works on a small scale.



As to black vs white backgrounds, I don't find one does metal effects better than the other if I use ultra-black paper vs a light table. White is easier in that you don't have to worry about segmenting the image. However, the metal remains a problem. Here's a case where the wormwood handle is nicely complex, but the blade has that uniform look that I am trying to improve.

 

[MGrayson]

The book Light ― Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting has a good section on lighting shiny stuff. It's one of the best photography books ever written IMHO, so I'm glad to have an opportunity to recommend it.

Matt

 

[cunim]

Matt, I have that book. Let me pull it out and actually read it.

 

[Boinger]

The book Light ― Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting has a good section on lighting shiny stuff. It's one of the best photography books ever written IMHO, so I'm glad to have an opportunity to recommend it.

Matt

I shoot exclusively shiny jewelry and this book helped me tremendously.

The basic problem is if you use diffuse lighting you will not get the metal look you are going after.

The thing you aren't thinking about is that you are not actually shooting the item in question you are effectively taking a picture of the light source.

Make your light source look the way you want. Then set that up as a the reflection path to the blade.

I don't know if you understand what I am trying to convey? (I realize it's a rather poor description, I should try to draw up what I mean.)

 

[Photon42]

I don't know if it helps but Karl Taylor showed a nice trick with a laser to place the light for a reflective surface. It is around the 8 minute mark.

 

[MGrayson]

Normally, I'd write a page or two about convolution, but the book (and the video) probably do a better job, and I'm tired. It's all ray tracing, and rays go the same forwards as backwards. With a shiny surface, it's "easy" because the rays don't spread out after hitting the surface. With, say, a face, it's more complicated. The problem is that our experience is with the complicated case where everything illuminates everything else, and it bothers us when we get to the simple case where only the reflected ray illuminates that pixel.

 

[JeRuFo]

Another thing to maybe think about is to shoot the subject multiple times with different light and mask off the areas that you don't want. With objects that have a lot of different textures or angles that can sometimes be easier. That way you can shoot a base image in diffused light and add a few kickers for certain reflective areas. I find it sometimes easier to mask off an area in post than to setup a lot of flags and get it right in camera. You want to be subtle with the changes in lighting of course, but it can help out sometimes. Purists will scream at this maybe. But I don't really see it as fixing it in post, more like using the whole workflow to your advantage.

 

[cunim]

Thanks to all . I am experimenting. Fortunately, I have two 120 mm macros that give me good results. One lives on a P1 XF camera, the other ((a Rodie in a Rollei shutter) on the monolith. I tend to stick with the view camera because it is just too hard to focus stack different illumination arrangements into one image. Anyway, I like the retro thing and setting up the proper combination of tilt and swing is both tricky and rewarding. Once it's done, you are free to concentrate on the lights. Stacking gets in the way, somehow.

Focus is the easy part. The real challenge is all in the lights. Damascus steel needs a very different treatment than polished titanium or satin stainless. I can, on a good day, get one of those things right but not all.

Here's an example of two reasonably good shots of typical subject (knife by Canadian maker Rod Olson). One is lit to show the object in a fairly straightforward way. The other is lit for drama. If it is about the knife, the first pic is probably more useful. If it is about the photo, I prefer the second. In neither photo am I happy with the blade.

Keep the tips coming, and I'll keep working.