Workshop Week 3: Lighting Workshop: Still Life

Last week we worked with solid objects where light bounced off them; this week we worked with the opposite, translucent objects. The object was a bottle of green body wash.

We also experimented with a Mamiya RZ67, a film camera that has been fused with a digital element. It was a totally different experience compared to a digital which I would normally work with. The quality of the images taken on the Mamiya was incredible and not expected for a film camera.

Here are a few of our more successful images as we worked towards a final image.

Notes:

Started off with 1/125 and F16. 

Two lights were used, one behind and slightly underneath the infinity board at 2.0 and another to the right side of the object at 3.5. 

Introduced a mirror opposite to the light as we noticed the subject was too dark.

A soft box was added to the front light to help create a highlight down the side. We knocked the power of the light down by 1 stop (2.5).

We swapped front light stand for something smaller to create a larger highlight down the side of the bottle due to it being cut out.

White card was swapped for the mirror to brighten object from the other side. We also moved the light underneath the infinity board backwards as we found the image as a whole was a little over-exposed.

We then played around with the highlight created by the left light with a soft box. Katie recommended us to take a shot of each time we moved the light round and to find the position that best worked for the highlight.

Next we needed to light the other side evenly and went through white card and a reflective mirror to try to achieve this.

The backlight is bumped up to 3.0.

We added another light underneath the infinity board but facing the object at 2.5 to give us a lighter background. 

Mirror was moved closer to the right side of the object.

We attempted adding white card to the top of the object but it didn't make a difference. We also swapped it for a mirror but again it made no difference to the result.

We then added a fourth light to the right side of the object at 2.0. 

The fourth light bounced off a gold reflector but we soon noticed that it was reflecting the actual reflector into the object which is not what we wanted. Left light was bumped up a stop. 

We also changed the aperture from f16 to f18 which had a huge effect on the result from what we had been previously getting. 

This is the final image. It obviously isn't our best shot if we had more time but we were satisfied with the results and felt we had learnt a great lot about lighting through translucent objects.