I recently was shooting a dress for a designer and one of the things she specifically requested was for the jewels/sequins/shiny thread in the dress to sparkle in the photos.
I attempted to create a direct reflection coming from the jewels by pointing a hard light source directly at the jewels. And while they did sparkle a bit more, it was nothing near what I was hoping for.
I know jewelry shooters will do something similar. But the scale is completely different. The shiny facets/sides of the plastic "jewels" on the dress were pretty small in size, so I don't get the feeling that that was helping. It also didn't help that the dress was very light in color (wedding dress).
There are no better or worse results. You are in a need of a "star filter", google it and you will get it. It seems unnatural but it is remarkable for advertising. For a more realistic result you need to stop down the lens to the end. I think a prime should do, but f22 minimum, or f32 if possible. That will give a realistic sparkles that are close to what we ses with our eyes.
Here is what google said for a star filter:
What you are looking for are mirror-like specular refections. Just like a mirror you will get more reflections bouncing back at the camera if the light source is very near the camera. A smaller point light source will create smaller harder edged reflections than a large one.
The other option has already been mentioned, a cross-hatch "star" filter over the lens.. Enter "Star Filter: in the B&H product search box at the top of the thread listing page.
There are no better or worse results. You are in a need of a "star filter", google it and you will get it. It seems unnatural but it is remarkable for advertising. For a more realistic result you need to stop down the lens to the end. I think a prime should do, but f22 minimum, or f32 if possible. That will give a realistic sparkles that are close to what we ses with our eyes.
Here is what google said for a star filter:
cgardner wrote:
What you are looking for are mirror-like specular refections. Just like a mirror you will get more reflections bouncing back at the camera if the light source is very near the camera. A smaller point light source will create smaller harder edged reflections than a large one.
The other option has already been mentioned, a cross-hatch "star" filter over the lens.. Enter "Star Filter: in the B&H product search box at the top of the thread listing page.
(I'm aware of what what a direct/specular/whatever-you-want-to-call-it reflection is.)
I tried different angles with the hard light source including on-cam axis. Made no difference.
The jewels were very small - the facets (not sure if that's the correct term) on the edges of the jewels were perhaps 2 or 3mm in size. At that size, I doubt you're going to be able to tell the difference between a hard/soft edged reflection... The jewel facets are just showing up as an overexposed spot anyway - so the star filter options is sounding like it may be the way to go.
I attempted to create a direct reflection coming from the jewels by pointing a hard light source directly at the jewels.
What hard light source did you use? Also, can you give an idea of your overall light setup? A simple sketch using MSPaint would be the best. I've got some ideas...
"Hard and shiny", "soft and diffused" are lighting terms that are often misused and confused.
"Hard and soft" deal with shadow transition areas, which is controlled mainly by relative size of the light source to subject. A small light source will shorten the shadow transition zone creating a hard light, but it won't necessarily create "shine".
"Shiny and diffused" are light qualities defined in the spectral highlight areas, which like catchlights, directly reflect the character of the light source itself. If you want shiny highlights, your light source needs to be shiny, whether it is big or small.
It is quite possible to increase shine, snap, radiance or whatever you choose to call it without losing the soft wrap of light created by a large light source simply by bouncing light off a silver (or mirrored) surface on to your subject rather than putting light through a diffuser, such as a soft box or translucent umbrella. This will cause spectral highlights in the dress, in the eyes, on the skin, etc. to reflect the same quality of the "shiny" light source.
The best choice for increasing shine on your beautiful subject (without enhancing sparkle through filtration) would be to use a large silver parabolic indirect reflector, such as EL Octa without diffuser, a Giant Reflector or Briese Focus. A reasonable facsimile of these expensive modifiers, would be a large silver umbrella. You could also consider some silver reflectors (even a mirror) as lower fill on the shadow side. The dress should pick up spectrals from reflectors even at a distance if you want to maintain your fill ratio.
Judging from the example you posted I'd say your problems are more related to pose, exposure and sharpening of the files than the lighting.
The way she is posed with arm so much closer to the key light than the dress you can't correctly expose the arm without significantly under exposing the dress as it is in you example. Start by using a pose that puts the face and dress closer to the key light than the shoulders or other body parts so you can correctly expose the whites on the dress without clipping the skin tones.
You can't expect highlights to pop when they are underexposed. White-on-white requires very precise control over exposure to put the specular reflections just at the point of clipping (255 value) while retaining the textured whites in the 240-245 range.
You also can't expect highlights to pop if the file is soft. In a situation where I want added sparkle I make a dupe layer, over-sharpen it a bit, then blend in the over-sharpened layer with a mask. Try doing that with USM set to 500, .3, 0 Example....
Sounds to me like the designer needs to use larger jewels.
I'm serious. If you shoot a outfit with sequins you get all sorts of glitter/sparkle off that. Those are bigger than the jewels you described. Could you see the sparkles by eye? If you can't see it with your eye, the camera for sure isn't going to see it either.
cgardner wrote:
Judging from the example you posted I'd say your problems are more related to pose, exposure and sharpening of the files than the lighting.
The way she is posed with arm so much closer to the key light than the dress you can't correctly expose the arm without significantly under exposing the dress as it is in you example. Start by using a pose that puts the face and dress closer to the key light than the shoulders or other body parts so you can correctly expose the whites on the dress without clipping the skin tones.
You can't expect highlights to pop when they are underexposed. White-on-white requires very precise control over exposure to put the specular reflections just at the point of clipping (255 value) while retaining the textured whites in the 240-245 range.
You also can't expect highlights to pop if the file is soft. In a situation where I want added sparkle I make a dupe layer, over-sharpen it a bit, then blend in the over-sharpened layer with a mask. Try doing that with USM set to 500, .3, 0 Example....
I'm really beginning to think that the size of the "jewels" and the similarity of the color of the dress is really what I'm struggling with. If it was a dark dress, the highlights would stand out much more. If they were sequins or something larger, they'd stand out even more.
I don't think it's her pose. Her arm really isn't all that much closer to the light relatively speaking. I was using a rather large light source that was at least 8 feet away (notice the soft shadows.) Perhaps you assumed I was using a smaller modifier that was closer and therefore assumed the light was less even?
In any case I really doubt that her pose has anything to do with it. In this example her arm is at most 4 inches closer to the light source on the viewers left. Still not looking very "sparkley".
Further inspection of a 100% crop shows that the jewels really are shiny. It's just not apparent from more than 6 inches away because they're so damned small and because they're surrounded very similar tones... Again, I think a much darker dress would have helped the highlights stand out a bit more.
Good point on underexposed highlights. They were actually overexposed, I think web-sizing the files may have obscured that somewhat. The above crop is pretty much what the original file looked like as well at 100%
The crop above has only had minimal pre-sharpening done at the time the raw file was converted. Even with sharpening however, the highlights just don't jump like something from say a sequin.
The designer was really hoping for something that would just jump off the dress. I'm very curious what a star filter would have done. If I do much more of this - I may have to look into trying one out...
TJ Asher wrote:
Sounds to me like the designer needs to use larger jewels.
I'm serious. If you shoot a outfit with sequins you get all sorts of glitter/sparkle off that. Those are bigger than the jewels you described. Could you see the sparkles by eye? If you can't see it with your eye, the camera for sure isn't going to see it either.
Hey Todd!
I think you're right on about the size of the jewels... I actually shot somebody tonight who had a piece w' sequins and they were much more obvious...
oobie wrote:
I'm really beginning to think that the size of the "jewels" and the similarity of the color of the dress is really what I'm struggling with. If it was a dark dress, the highlights would stand out much more. If they were sequins or something larger, they'd stand out even more.
Exactly... Texture and 3D appearance in a photo is an illusion created in the brain from evaluating contrast. The problem with white-on-white is the limited tonal range available to create contrast. You only have about 1/2 - 3/4 stop difference in exposure highlight- shadow on the white fabric to work with.
Look at photos of diamonds. What makes them seem to sparkle isn't just the highlights, but rather how the brilliant highlights contrast with the deep dark colors and in some areas totally dark facets. To create that same illusion on the dress will require the lighting to be a three-layer angel food cake with bright specular accents and dark hard shadows on the jewels, but soft overall texture on the fabric and flattering lighting on the model.
To pull off that goal of hard rocks and smooth shiny fabric and normal looking skin in the same photo is a tall order. But if you work the problem based on how we know light works solutions emerge. First you need overall lighting which is even and flattering to the model yet creates more contrast than in a normal portrait on the clothing. The suggestion someone made of using large silver umbrellas instead of a white soft box as key light is ideal.
Last year when asked to photograph a confirmation graduation ceremony at my church. I had twenty girls to shoot full-length, H&S and then full length with parents in only 40 minutes (2 min. each series) so I needed a simple lighting set-up that would work for all three poses without moving the lights. Knowing the confirmation dresses would be white stain with lots of detail and texture like wedding dresses I altered my usual dual-hotshoe w. diffuser strategy and instead used a very shiny silver mylar umbrella on the off camera light and diffuser on the camera bracket fill.
Despite the rather simple lighting set-up with the sliver umbrella placed 45 degrees to the left the contrast created by the combination of specular reflections off the highlights and harder shadows resulting from the choice of the shiny silver umbrella resulted in good rendering of the detail in the dress (it looks like satin not dull flat muslin) while retaining flattering lighting on the face, despite the fact the dress is oriented almost directly facing the key light. The key factor was how the silver umbrella changed the character of the light to make the highlights more specular and the shadows harder and darker: more contrast. The exposure is even overall because I intentionally used a pose which kept the face and front of the dress an equal distance to the key light and the bare arm further away to make it darker. The face and background (which I had no role in selecting) were sharpened normally in post processing, with the details of the dress sharpened a bit more on a masked dupe layer.
The point I'm trying to get across to you is that in any situation, especially one as technically challenging and the one you face, pose and lighting need to work together holistically to it pull off effectively. As a gauge to the lighting and relative exposure in your original, look at the highlights and shadows on her arm on left, shoulder on the right, face and chest. She is standing in her own shadow! Yet you think the pose is OK for revealing the detail on the front of the dress?
First you need harder key light, like a big silver umbrella. A bare bulb flash directly over the camera for fill would be ideal in this application because it will create a point light source near the camera axis, which is the ideal thing technically for creating sparkle in cut stones and bouncing those reflections directly back into the lens. Creating the specular reflections with the fill light will allow better independent control of exposure of the fabric with the key light power, and exposition of the texture with its angle.
With lighting less is often more. To get more contrast in the jewels than created by white specular highlights on a white background you need to create some darker contrasting areas for the them to play off of perceptually. Doing that with lighting would be very difficult in this situation, requiring cross-lighting with a direct controlled source like a gridded reflector to create contrasting shadows on the edges of the jeweled areas. But the accent lighting would at the same time make everything else look too harsh and also create a muddle of the modeling of face and dress with crossed shadows.
But thanks to the marvel of Photoshop there is a simpler means to the same end of more contrast around the jeweled areas. It is relatively simple to increase shadow contrast in white-on-white image by blending in a dupe layer with post-processing enhanced contrast in the detail areas. The contrast can be boosted in selected areas without the crossed-shadows a light source would create. Here's the same example I used above with shadow contrast boosted in the dress to illustrate.
So to recap, your exposure needs to be dead on with the specular reflections directly back into the lens from bare flash fill over the camera are allowed to barely clip at 255, while the white fabric is kept 1/3 stop under clipping around 245.
As mentioned you only have about 1/2 - 3/4 stop difference in exposure highlight- shadow on the white fabric to work with to create a realistic illusion of texture. That is why EVEN lighting and posing so the most important jeweled areas of the FRONT dress are closest to the key light, not in the model's own shadow is critical, and all parts of the dress you want to have a normal range of tone a similar distance to the light. If you keep the dress a even distance to the key lighting, the things you want brightest closest to the lights with the pose, and control the shadow detail and lighting ratio with neutral fill which also creates the direct-back-into-camera specular reflections you should be able to pull off the illusion of texture and sparkle in well lit white dress.
As I hopefully illustrated the use of even a simple lighting strategy with a silver umbrella on the key light will add specular more contrasty character to the light which is ideal for revealing shape and texture on white fabric, especially smooth reflective textures like satin. Bare bulb fill flash will also be very specular and add more detail revealing contrast. Absent faked ray reflections with a star filter its having small 255 specular highlights contrasted the much darker shadows which creates the illusion of "sparkle" in a photo.
Because camera files are inherently unsharp due to the capture array and AA filters unsharp masking sharpening during post processing is also an important part of the holistic solution to the problem to make the fine detail visible. Contrast in white tones can also be enhanced perceptually in Photoshop must easier that with lighting on white-on-white with a combination of selective over-sharpening of the specular reflections and enhancing darkness of the adjacent shadows.
The ideal solution for a situation like is to use more than one photo: use a wide full-length shot in overall flattering lighting to reveal the overall design and look of the dress and close-up inset photos with more contrasty lighting to reveal the fine detail.
cgardner wrote:
What makes them seem to sparkle isn't just the highlights, but rather how the brilliant highlights contrast with the deep dark colors and in some areas totally dark facets. To create that same illusion on the dress will require the lighting to be a three-layer angel food cake with bright specular accents and dark hard shadows on the jewels, but soft overall texture on the fabric and flattering lighting on the model.
Silver umbrella/refectors to bring out the shine (bright specular accents).
Black cutters to bring out the contrast (dark hard shadows).
The rest of it, you've got covered.
Basically you're doing product photography AND a portrait.
cgardner wrote:
The point I'm trying to get across to you is that in any situation, especially one as technically challenging and the one you face, pose and lighting need to work together holistically to it pull off effectively. As a gauge to the lighting and relative exposure in your original, look at the highlights and shadows on her arm on left, shoulder on the right, face and chest. She is standing in her own shadow! Yet you think the pose is OK for revealing the detail on the front of the dress?
First of all - let me say thanks for your detailed explanation. I appreciate the time you put in.
The only thing is - the detail is not entirely in her own shadow. Her arms shadow falls into her armpit and the transition to shadow starts around the front of her dress. So there is plenty of area on the right side of her bust where there should be lots of sparkle. It wasn't the best photo for examples, but it's the first one I processed so I just stuck that one up. The second image I posted and included a crop of has light coming from all sides and still wasn't looking very sparkly. That's why I was saying I really don't think the pose has much to do with the fact that the jewels weren't doing much. Granted, I didn't do any additional post work to reveal detail. But that's because I wanted a softer feel to the photos. I guess I was hoping that it would be possible to have some sort of sparkle without having a hard gritty feel to the image.
cgardner wrote:
The ideal solution for a situation like is to use more than one photo: use a wide full-length shot in overall flattering lighting to reveal the overall design and look of the dress and close-up inset photos with more contrasty lighting to reveal the fine detail.
You assume there should be sparkle on the shadow side based on what?
Where we differ here is understanding based on experience. My suggested approaches are based on understanding the physics of light and the physical characteristics of light sources as well as and practical experience over the past 40 years working with a wide variety of light sources and modifiers ranging from sunlight to carbon arcs (its nearest artificial equivalent) in conventional and technical photography and other areas of the graphic arts. Its also based on a good understanding of human perception: what will create the illusion of "sparkle" in a photo which will simulate how we see it in real life. Making things seem real in photos sometimes requires a bit of exaggeration, perceptual sleight-of-hand, and a good understanding of the technical limitations of the tools used.
The best way to determine whether my advice and that of others here works, or not, is to try it an compare the results with what you already have based on how you thought things should work. Consider that If what you already know how to do was working you wouldn't be here asking questions how to make it work better, no? So stop the pointless debate over of how you think things should work vs the advice myself and others have provided and go try it and see what happens by comparison with the techniques you already know how to use.
The idea of using bare bulb fill over the camera where its tiny specular reflections will bounce directly back into the camera lens will provide sparkle in the camera. Try it and you'll find out how to actually make your assumption that there can be sparkle in shadow areas can be correct: its just a matter of selecting the right tool for the job and using it effectively.
The jewel facets are just showing up as an overexposed spot anyway - so the star filter options is sounding like it may be the way to go.
