Hrow wrote:
7. Tungsten copy lights should be used together and not for other purposes singularly so that they age together. Lights should be polarized. Biggest mistake most people make is not polarizing their lights.
quick question - what does using polarized lights do for you?
bouch wrote:
quick question - what does using polarized lights do for you?
thanks
Reduces reflection / glare, yes, even witout a polarizer on the lens. Often necessary when shooting under glass but also will come into play with with textured surfaces such as oil paintings.
... you can get away with outdoor, full shade... just color correct for the blue... otherwise tungsten lights... but full shade is often easier (maybe with matboard reflectors)... Stopped down on a tripod I never had any problems with a normal 50 on work the size you are talking (I came out of art school with only a K1000 and cheap 50 to work with). I was trained as a photographer/painter and shot all my own slides and my galleries always complimented me on the reproductive work... I last shot someone else's work for the cover of a small poetry magazine using a 50 CM and a 10D and it was more than up to the task... Museums would have different requirements of course...
pregan wrote:
Any ideas on how to achieve polarized lights? Prefer an inexpensive solution to start with.
Thanks
You used to be able buy a polarized film in sheets and then would use a gel holder. Don't get it too close to the light or they will melt. We used polarized glass filters which were quite expensive. You might want to check with the guy with the Forox for sale on Ebay and see if he has the glass filters for the camera and if he will sell them separately. If he does / will you will have to jerryrig something to hold them in front of your lights. You may also want to do an Ebay search on Marron Carrol and Oxberry - they were two other manufacturers who sold polarized glass filters for their camera systems.
Roscoe, Edmund Scientific, 3M all sell polarizing sheets. I'd even check B&H out. Be sure to orientate the polarizing sheets on the lights the same way. Then on the polarizer on your camera, make sure you get full brightness by rotating it. If rotating the wrong way, you will totally opaque out your view.
Personally, I do not use polarizing sheets for my copy work.
jjlphoto wrote:
Roscoe, Edmund Scientific, 3M all sell polarizing sheets. I'd even check B&H out. Be sure to orientate the polarizing sheets on the lights the same way. Then on the polarizer on your camera, make sure you get full brightness by rotating it. If rotating the wrong way, you will totally opaque out your view.
Personally, I do not use polarizing sheets for my copy work.
Most of the work I did was under glass which mandated polarizing. You can also have problems with glossy flats and articles that have dimensional quality to them such as oils.
As another option... The more diffuse the light source the less reflections become problematic. Basically, if you were to take some PVC piping, elbows and tees you could make two cheap frames and attach a something as simple as a white sheet to them and then place the lights directly behind them - again carefully avoiding getting them too close to avoid creating a fire hazard. Balancing the light spread becomes easier as well as distance and angle changes have less impact the more diffused the source. We regularly kept enough PVC pipe and various joints around to make any size frame we needed for either diffusing or scrimming for product shots and I was a regular at our local fabric store.
Lots of different ways to skin a cat, unfortunately there are so few good recipes once you do.
