Photo tip Week 5

[Brian Brown]

This will be the last week for lighting. To get a better quality of lighting than the setup shown in last weeks tip (pic. A), you simply need to diffuse and broaden your light source. This is as simple as putting a diffusion panel in front of the light (pic. B). The picture here shows me using translucent Plexiglas. You can also use drafting velum, or white rip stop nylon. To do so, you need to devise a method for holding them. Don’t get too close to the light, or you may have a fire. While this works very well, you need six arms for the diffusers and bounce boards. What a pain. The way I like to do it is with what I call a covered wagon (pic. C). It creates an effect similar to a photo tent, but with much greater versatility. The covered wagon can be made from three fiberglass rods and a couple of yards of rip stop nylon. The nylon will cost about $12.00, and the fiberglass rods are flag posts from bicycle flags; $9.00 each. The short top rod came from a Kite shop. Fiberglass rods are extremely hard to cut without special tools, so plan your dimensions around available sizes, or have a kite shop cut them for you. Your covered wagon can be made in many sizes to fit your needs. For the base in mine, I used Formica on a sheet of particle board. Just sew the nylon with tubes along two edges for the fiberglass rods to fit in. The third rod is used on the top as a stretcher. The whole setup can be put together in about two minutes, and stores quite easily. I like this setup better than a commercial photo tent because one wall acts as a bounce board just like the tent, but there is enough room to add one or more bounce boards inside that are moveable, giving more control to your lighting. It's also cheap and easy to build.

The other pictures show the covered wagon in use, with the finished effects, and how to easily make a graduated background by changing the angle and distance of your background in relation to the subject. Next week, Backgrounds.

Good luck.

Brian

[sascha gast]

very nice. I like taking pictures of my work, ohotography is another hobby of mine, so I am happy to see this.
it really doesn't take much to make your turnings shine

[Don Snethen]

Gee thanks, Brian, that info is great. I like the "covered wagon" scheme and think that I will attempt to make one like that. Since I sew better than I photograph my work the tent part shouldn't be too hard. Even if I am not completely successful the result will certainly be better than what I now have and use.

Don

[Bernie Weishapl]

Thanks Brian that is so helpful to me. I do appreciate it.