Task: Specular Highlights

I know it's been a while, but I've been taking photos of things.

Assignment - Specular Highlights.

First thing - having looked at the flickr uploads there was lots to learn - maybe too much - and all very impressive. I wasn't sure what to shoot after looking at the others. So...

Lesson 1 - Just get on with it!

In the end I decided on an old friend and a hip flask I got from my nephew's wedding as a "thank you" gift. Again - good enough.

The set ups I tried were many, and all of them worked to a certain degree. I lost quite a bit of time trying to shoot tethered, but the software didn't like wireless flash so I tried TTL - EEERRGGH. Gave up on tethered and went back to manual flash - much better having the control back.

Lesson 2 - More control with manual (but need to find out how to do it tethered).

Again everything was set up in my kitchen. Lighting - YN565, YN560, white shoot through umbrella, home-made silver foil reflector card, small LED torch. Camera and techie stuff at the bottom.

I posted two set-ups here - one with the strobe level with the subject to camera right and one with it raised directly over the subject, By the way, I don't know why but the lionks to flickr only work on the image captions!

Set-up 1

I'm quite pleased with set up #1 (strobe camera right). There are 4 lights here effectively and the images below tell us what they are one by one.

 One strobe, camera right, through a white umbrella

PLUS - one strobe on camera bounced off ceiling with blue gel

PLUS - home-made silver foil reflector card to subject's left

PLUS - small LED torch hidden behind and shining through bottle

(it's presence is given away by the added shadow behind the bottle)

Using the LED torch to mimic the strobes so that I could "see" where they were going to light the subject was really useful too (it's also really good for AF in low light for still life!).

I doubt if I'd have got to this lighting by myself without the help of all the other strobists' postings on flickr - so a massive thanks to you all. I have learnt a good deal from this exercise but I have a weird feeling that there's an awful lot more still to come!

Lesson 3 - Be inspired by the work of others.

Set-up 2

The second set was actually shot before the set above, but I have included it because it was such a simple set up yet it gave such a good result. It was a simple strobe through a white umbrella directly above the subject - nothing else (actually it was above and slightly in front of the subject and the torch was used through the bottle again).

In the second shot I thought I'd try and GOBO out the specular highlight on the hip flask and I was quite pleased with the result. However, as you can see, I encroached a little in the frame. Still, with a boom stand and a properly designed GOBO (ie not just me holding a box in the way) there is room for development here.

 

Single strobe through umbrella above

Trying to GOBO out the specular highlight on the hip flask

Lesson 4 - Try it - then perfect it!  (and make sure the focus is spot on!)

Comments are welome - at least they let me know I'm not the only person on the planet!

That techie stuff
Camera - Canon EOS 550d
iso 100
Set 1 - f4, set 2 f1.8
1/200
Lens - 50mm f1.8
Strobe - Yongnuo YN565 + YN560
Manual