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Using a Light Tent (or Lightbox), Part 1
By sirsnapalot | January 24, 2010
I acquired an ImageMaker Light Tent recently, and have had some fun trying it out. A light tent is quite useful if you are trying to photograph things around the house, and you want to isolate them and better control the lighting of them. This is Part 1 of several articles on photographing using a tent. Suffice for now the best picture to date I have taken in these very controlled circumstances.
Wine Glasses in a Light Tent
What I like about this photo is that the lighting- here backlit, is diffused. The tent itself shields the shiny glass from reflections. Also, I had to shoot at night to get this desired effect- a single backlight providing the illumination with no other ambient lighting. To darken the light, I used a piece of black cloth draped inside the light tent- the backdrop here.
Another good purchase I made was the piece of black plexiglass- here a 1 foot square piece. It provides a reflective surface, but the reflection is very muted. Also, I like how it blends with the black cloth backdrop.
With this shot, as with most around-the-house shots, you really need to pay attention to details. In this case, it was not just eliminating spurious reflections, but also depth of field so that both the glass in front and the back would be sharply in focus. Also, I they needed to be carefully centered. There are still a few minor things I would do differently- there is a label on the base of the front glass I would turn to the back. Also, these are cheap glasses, so have distortions in them. When you strive for a perfect shot, you realize that “perfect” is very difficult to achieve. Still, I’m pretty happy with the result.
I’ll be experimenting with this in the coming weeks and months, and will post some more articles, and details about the light tent I purchased (you can find them online for around $100- I bought mine at a local Wolf Camera store that also serves as a Wolf Camera Outlet store- they sell odds and ends there as well).
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Topics: Advanced, Creative, Lighting, Product Photogrphay | No Comments »
