The gap in understanding modern art
20s at f13 65mm
Caught in time (hopefully!)
1/30s f22 19mm.
Glass photography - Rim lighting a Wine bottle and glass
21st Sep 11
This post is another example of why people should join photography clubs. Yesterday evening was Bishopthorpe Camera Club’s ” Close up and macro photography” evening. Having said ‘yes’ to an invitation several months ago from our hard working organiser, Bryan, I had been thinking of a suitable subject for sharing with members. I keep a record of articles in magazines and looked up two related articles using a single studioflash head. One article is not available online - Digital SLR photography Jan 2011- but the other one is - Digital SLR photography Dec 2008 - don’t ask me why the one that is three years old is still available and the other is not…
For those readers who do not have access to a studioflash head, I also did some investigation online and have discovered this link - Lighting A Wine Glass With Rim Light which uses two reading lamps turned on their side.
Following the DSLR tutorial, I have achieved the setup that you can see below. I have the room lighting on to show you the setup, but switched this off so as to avoid any unwanted reflections.
The second image is with a standard off-camera flash held in front of the bottle and glass.
The point of rim lighting is that you remove any source of light from directly behind the object. Draping black material over the soft box achieves this, but leaving two strips of the soft box showing either side means that the flash illuminates the sides of the bottle and glass.
The Whisky bottle and glass was the result of the evening’s practice. The label prevents the rim light coming in the viewer’s direction, creating a disappearing edge. I decided I needed a bottle free of labels.
I soaked off the labels from a wine bottle, and substituted ribena. Keeping the camera level with the bottle and glass, and separating the two slightly seemed to me to be the best composition.
I still want to try a wider softbox to create a wider patch of colour in both bottle and glass.