At 4:19 PM +0000 2/3/03, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 19:16:55 -1000
>From: "danrich" <danrich@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] shadowless photography
>
>What are some of the best setup equipment gadgets to create shadowless
>photographs for catalog work, bugs, people. I just hate shadows where the
>don't belong.
For people, you don't usually want truly shadowless, as the photos will look
quite flat. Two big softbox lights on either side and a bit above, with one
box putting out three times as much light as the other, is a good starting
point. But you didn't say what the photos are for. There are books written on
how best to light portraits.
For bugs and small objects, a macro light setup is best. Here, there are two
schools of thought.
First is a ringlight of some kind. In OM-dom, there are two kinds. One kind
directly lights the subject using crossed polarizers, thus supressing all
surface reflections but almost eliminating all modeling due to shadows. This
works very well with colored objects with distracting reflections, and fails
miserably with shiny (metallic) objects. The other kind wraps the object in
directionless soft light, which works well with metallic objects and many
ordinary objects, but again all modelling is supressed.
Second is the macro ring with two flash units on it, one set stronger than the
other. This works just like the two softboxes of the above example, so we get
modelling. One can set this up to do the crossed-polarizer trick as well, so
one can get surface reflection supression without losing modeling.
The other way to eliminate shadows behind the subject is to light the
background directly.
What kinds of things are in the catalog? It does matter; no one setup will
work for everything.
Joe Gwinn
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