Lighting 201: Reflections are Our Friends
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Okay, our shot doesn’t look too bad, but there is still something missing. This is a semi-transparent object, not a solid. It would be great if we could get even more reflection from inside, to enhance the illusion of our “Sparkling” white grape juice.
Because there are no particles floating around inside our bottle (at least I hope not), it would be very difficult to get enough light inside the bottle to work. However, as we have learned from the placement of our Key and Fill lights, reflections are a blessing with transparent objects.[an error occurred while processing this directive]Take a piece of foam core or even crumpled aluminum foil (or white paper) and cut a shape that is smaller than the width of the bottle and nearly the same shape.
Place this mini bounce card behind the bottle, propped up in some way.
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| Make sure the mini bounce cannot be seen sticking out from the sides of your bottle. It is often a good idea to check the set up through your camera lens or attached video monitor as you make adjustments. |
Now take a small light (a Dedolight or Lowel Pro Light) and position it directly over the white card. Use barn doors to keep the light from shining on the bottle.
Look at figure 18 to see the difference the mini bounce card has on the bottle. The green really stands out and the reflections from the Soft Box and Bounce Card still give nice highlights to the front of the bottle.
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| How it looks on video. |
In this lesson, we used more lights than you might think to create our final shot. Experiment with other transparent objects (such as a water bottle), try different colored mini bounce cards to see what effect the reflected light has on your object, and try adding gels to your lights for different effects.
Incidentally, this same reflection principle applies to chrome and metal objects.
In the next lesson we’ll take it outside and light a news stand up using only the light from the Sun.
Equipment used for this lesson:
- 2 Lowel Omni lights with stands and barn doors.
- 1 Westcott Speed Ring
- 3 Matthews Stands
- 1 Lowel Tota light
- 1 Lowel Pro Light with barn doors
- 1 Large White Foam Core (can be found at art supply store)
- 1 Small White Foam Core
- 1 Mini Bounce Card
When not working deep in the labs of the DMN Central Division testing the latest and greatest software/hardware products Stephen Schleicher can be found at the local university teaching a few courses on video and web production. He can be reached at schleicher@mindspring.com. You can also visit him on the web at www.mindspring.com/~schleicherPrev 1 2 3 4 5
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