This month’s workshop with the camera club was ‘Available Light (no flash)’:
We brought along to the hall different backgrounds, props and lighting sources. The idea was to try to use the type of lighting available in a domestic situation without using flash light sources.
The above photo shows a setup created by one of the members. The lighting source was a small 150w halogen floodlight. This shows the original lighting setup with the single lamp to the right. Notice how hard the light is by the distinct, sharp-edged shadows.
I wasn’t satisfied with this lighting, so I modified the setup by introducing a reflector to the left and directing the light at this reflector – the idea being to get a larger, softer light. It took a few attempts to get this right – one advantage of available light is you can see the effect as you move the lights and reflectors. We did need to flag the light (it has quite a wide spread) to stop it shining directly on the toys. This gave the following result:
As you can see, the lighting is a lot softer and much more natural looking. However, the there are still some hard-ish shadows, such as where the arm of the lower toy is casting a shadow on the ball. We tried to cure this by adding another reflector above the display looking down:
This has removed the foreground shadows, leaving just a light shadow on the background. A much more satisfactory result. Below is the setup for this:
One reflector on a stand, the other held in position.
This was a useful exercise as we had to learn to deal with the low light levels (hence higher ISO and slower shutter speeds), tungsten and mixed light sources, light showing through the background material, amongst others…