After week two my optimism was really high, but the realities of life came crashing down upon me in week three. I had a lot going on in my personal and business life. I a had a good meeting with a new client, but I also had two family members have accidents that sent them to the hospital. (They are both recovering fine.)
This week's photo is of a Seiko watch. My goal was to shoot the watch straight on using a diffusing cone. As the photograph evolved it turned into more of a light test and although I like the final image I think I can do a little better if I spend more time practicing. (Luckily I have 49 weeks to go in my challenge.)
I used four lights for this shot. My three Einstein strobes and a small flash unit. I have another large strobe but the color temperature is slightly warmer (more yellow/red) than the Einsteins. With the product being a shiny silver watch the difference in color would be glaring and potentially a lot of work to correct. The small flash, although a little more difficult to work with, has a matching color temperature.
The problems I ran into have a lot to do with the lens used. I had a 50mm lens with a macro tube. The quality of the lens is fine for most of my purposes. The problems are because of how close the camera has to be to the subject. Because of the distance from my camera to the subject everything else was affected. The cone I had to use was smaller and because of cone size the lights have to be placed closer. This affects the fall off of the light and the amount and quality of gradation I'm able to get on the polished surface of the watch. My ability to move and organize the lights around the cone is also affected. (I apologize because I changed to using diffusion panels before I took a set up photograph.)
I played around with my lighting set up for a while and eventually got a photograph I liked. I then decided to switch to diffusion panels. My goal was to see if I could give myself more room and create smoother gradients that went to black.
When shooting with a cone the light bounces around inside. This lights the parts of a shiny object not directly lit by the strobes. With a small cone like I was using there is not enough room for the light to drop off completely. The panels however allowed the light to drop off to black but there was not enough coverage around the watch to light the areas not directly hit by light.
Again, I don't dislike my final image here but I think it is important to recognize limitations and find ways to improve in the future. That is what this project is all about.