Looking for advice - shooting pics of bottle lamps?

chrism_scotland

chrism_scotland

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Folks; looking for a little help/pointers; my photography tends to be outdoor with landscape, city and travel the sort of thing I've shot for a few years.

My brother in-law makes and sells lamps by upcycling old Whisky/Gin bottles mainly but also other things (musical instruments, etc) and has his own website which show's off the different types of lamp he offers.

Most of his pics have been from his phone (iPhone) and I've been trying to help by getting better quality shots with my "proper" Fuji!

We got some nice "on-location" shots (Queensferry) but I had to do a lot of PP to really show the lighting; what I'd like to be able to do is take better pics of the lamps in the dark so that I can show off the bottle design / clay work but also have the lamp on (lit); struggling with this due to the extreme difference between the white light and darker bottle and wondered if flash/lighting might be able to help me?
 
chrism_scotland said:
Folks; looking for a little help/pointers; my photography tends to be outdoor with landscape, city and travel the sort of thing I've shot for a few years.

My brother in-law makes and sells lamps by upcycling old Whisky/Gin bottles mainly but also other things (musical instruments, etc) and has his own website which show's off the different types of lamp he offers.

Most of his pics have been from his phone (iPhone) and I've been trying to help by getting better quality shots with my "proper" Fuji!

We got some nice "on-location" shots (Queensferry) but I had to do a lot of PP to really show the lighting; what I'd like to be able to do is take better pics of the lamps in the dark so that I can show off the bottle design / clay work but also have the lamp on (lit); struggling with this due to the extreme difference between the white light and darker bottle and wondered if flash/lighting might be able to help me?
Click to expand...
Proper lighting will certainly help, but I have no idea what to suggest or if there is even an issue based on the information provided... but I suspect this might also be a situation where compositing multiple images is the easy/better answer.
 
It's straightforward enough.

Light and photograph the bottle with the light switched off, using flash. There are many ways of doing this, and this video shows the basics. The background doesn't need to be white of course.
And then take the shot again but this time with the light switched on. At a "normal" shutter speed for flash, around 1/125th second, little or nothing of the emitted light will show, but if you increase the shutter speed to something like 1 second, it will be a different story.

You can also do this in two separate shots and combine the images in post processing.

As it happens, I photographed something broadly similar today, here it is unlit
NAT036_unlit.jpg
And then I switched it on and did it again with a 1-second exposure
NAT036_lit.jpg
 
chrism_scotland said:
@sk66 @Garry Edwards Both; many thanks I'll take a look at the YT video and I suspect myself that multi image composite might be the way to go here
Click to expand...
Compositing is the slower way of doing it, by far, although it's a valid method it produces different results.

Re-reading my first post, I can see that it's confusing.

To clarify, the photo of the unlit lamp is really separate and nothing much to do with it. These shots are taken because they're needed. This one will end up being cut out and will be the main photo on Amazon, which insists on white backgrounds for their main pic.
The photo below, which I took many years ago, is another example of a combined exposure - flash for the product, long shutter speed for the emitted light, this may make more sense.
oven.jpg
 
chrism_scotland said:
@sk66 @Garry Edwards Both; many thanks I'll take a look at the YT video and I suspect myself that multi image composite might be the way to go here
Click to expand...

With bottles and especially lit bottles you'll run into the same problems as I would on certain watches or jewelleries. The bottle surface is very reflective but dark and then add lights from the inside to the equation and it can make things tricky. Generally, as has been said, shooting several images and combining them in PP is usually the most successful way of controlling everything.
 
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
With bottles and especially lit bottles you'll run into the same problems as I would on certain watches or jewelleries. The bottle surface is very reflective but dark and then add lights from the inside to the equation and it can make things tricky. Generally, as has been said, shooting several images and combining them in PP is usually the most successful way of controlling everything.
Click to expand...
Not really.
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
With bottles and especially lit bottles you'll run into the same problems as I would on certain watches or jewelleries.
Click to expand...
Watches and jewellery can be tricky, but for very different reasons - their small size makes it difficult to control the light really well.
Bottles though are easy, with the right lighting modifiers at the right angles.. The trick of course is to control the specular highlights (reflections) and not to try to avoid them.
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
and then add lights from the inside to the equation and it can make things tricky.
Click to expand...
The laws of physics tell us otherwise. If lighting is coming from the inside the perceived problems go away.
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
Generally, as has been said, shooting several images and combining them in PP is usually the most successful way of controlling everything.
Click to expand...
As I've said, it's a valid method, and possibly the easiest way of doing it for a single shot, but very time-consuming. If it takes say 20 minutes per image and there are 100 images then it doesn't make sense, it's so much easier, quicker and better to do it in a single shot.
Here's yet another example, again from a very long time ago
LA700.jpg

And, 13 years ago, I made a short video on how it's done. The quality is terrible but the content may help
 
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