I have tried all lenses I got and knew what works best for this purpose, I attached my manual Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.4. White balance went to auto as I knew that any other preset would not work. I know that the light temperature if household spot lights I was using would require 600 points of temperature offset on post processing. Lighting too, aperture priority, -2 exposure compensation, and keeping in mind that I may need to change apertures for desired DOF. Well, exposure compensation was actually the first parameter to set when needing different amount of light, however I took -2 to start with, not 0. The camera was tripod attached, so I was not worry about slow shutting. It was still life, I got all time I needed by the shutter to completely flips.

Object was another perfume bottle in our toilette. This time was mine, Del Mar Baldesarini of Hugo Boss. I had no real reason on choosing this more than the fact that I used my girldfriend’s Bvlgari before. Examining the object, I decided black background to go in. I did not even bother myself to try the white one. Why perfumes? Well, again, I had no real reason. Just felt that it would look nicer than a bottle of shampoo.

After a few shots with various lighting arrangement which funnily had only one parameter to set, I started to realize something different from the previous session. Well, not really. As always about lighting, it was all about direction and power. But how could we set the power of a household spotlight? So for both parameters I worked the same way, position of the lights. I move them back for lower intensity and vice versa.

Back to the problem. In my first session, the object’s surface was matte. This one I was using in the second session was clear and glowing. Problem was that the surface reflected the light, making it looked dully flat white. I tried a lot of formation until getting to a conclusion that the wall of my light tent was not provide enough diffusion for this particular object. So I instead of flooding toward the object through tent’s wall, I bounced it to a silver reflecting studio umbrella. Getting a way to make the main light better, another problem popped in. As the reflector ate up intensity of the main light, the fill in light become brighter. After a series of trial and error in moving it back and forward, I finally got the desired fill in effect by changing the light’s direction sideway.

It was not a hundred percent satisfactory as I wanted the surface to be completely free from light reflection, but for sure I found it good enough. Getting interested with fine art photography I read in a photography magazine, I decided to play a bit with high contrast technique.

Equipment in use: Canon EOS 5D Camera, Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.4 lens, Tronic light shed, a couple of Chinese-made lamp holder, Tronic studio reflector umbrella 85cm, and a couple of Excell light stand.