This weeks project was going to be a profile shot of a Seiko watch. This was one of the few times while shooting that I felt like I was limited by the equipment I have. I wanted a very contrast heavy photo but with good gradients. For a lot of my photographs I use a 50mm lens. If I want to do a macro shot I will use an extension tube to allow me to photograph very close to the subject. When I use the extension tube I run in to two problems that are closely related.
Since the lens I use is short I have to have the camera very close to the subject. Most of the time I can work around this, but bI have to use a smaller diffusion cone. The smaller cone does not allow the light to fall off as quickly as I wanted for this photograph. Also, the light will bounce around the smaller cone and fill in the shadows more than I intend. I can usually overcome this by using smaller lighting modifier(s). Instead of using strip boxes I use barn doors and instead of using 7 inch reflectors I use snoots.
I have three main options. One, I can fix the shadows in Photoshop. Second, I can buy even smaller lighting modifiers such as lens spot attachments or fiber optic spot lights. Third, I can buy a 100 mm macro lens.
In the end I did a light test and I spent a bit of time experimenting with the lights and light modifiers. I used both a cone and diffusion panels to see how I could manipulate the look of the photo with what I had on hand.
Diffusion panels