On 10/21/2010 3:29 PM, Olaf Greve wrote:
> ...
> The results are pretty pleasing, but not perfect. If you consider this shot
> (full size, unedited):
> http://www.millennics.com/test/PA215718.JPG
>
> The WB was not yet set properly; in reality, the backdrop is plain white.
>
> Now, my two main issues with the pictures are:
> 1) Some shadows still occur. This was surprising to me. Perhaps the high,
> perpendicular, position of the flashes relative to the subject, caused that?
> Is this something that can easily be improved (reflector?
> 45 degree angles from above? something else?)
Shadows and WB are trivial to fix in PS.
1. Select background.
2. Filter=>Blur=>Average.
3. Unselect.
4. Levels or Curves=> select central dropper, click on background.
> 2) Another unexpected issue are the two 'gleam' lines running over the length
> of the subject.
I don't think this can be fixed in post. The histogram spikes of the
reflections show that tonal detail is missing in
both highlights and, less so, in shadows. Sure enough, working on them in PS
can change the brightnesses, but they
become detailless areas.
I haven't been following this thread, involving as it does lots of things I
know little or nothing about. I just looked
up what brolly boxes are. I'm not sure either they or soft boxes will fully do
what you want.
Look at the geometry. Reflection is from a small, curved surface. If you use a
small light source, you get a thin,
bright line. The larger the source, the broader the line. Do a little drawing
of the set-up and do some ray tracing.
You'll see that only light from up to a certain angle reflects to the lens.
Beyond that, the reflections miss the lens,
causing the dark lines.
The geometry of a brolly box is worse than a soft box of equal size, as its
surface drops away from the subject,
reducing its effective angular coverage. Ray tracing will show that a dark line
will persist until soft boxes touch.
Brolly boxes can't quite do that, due to their shape. I'm not sure you can
completely avoid light/dark lines without a
full, 180 deg. source.
Was there discussion of using a light tent? That should be much better. Also,
this kind of subject is what the Oly T8
flash head with large reflector was made for. At least in the samples I've
seen, it killed specular reflections from
things like shiny watch innards so well they looked almost too flat. One could
fix that these days in post.
If I understand your description of your set-up, getting the brollys up and at
45 deg., so they come close or touch at
the top edges should help.
> To illustrate this, consider:
> http://www.millennics.com/test/PA215718_with_comments.jpg
>
> Could it perhaps be that the light was not diffuse enough?
Exactly, broad and diffuse.
Moose
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