How to photograph a lamp, or any object that is lit from within.
The lighting set up is nothing out of ordinary. I shoot with two studio strobes bounced into oversize white umbrellas for diffused light. Sometimes I add a small softbox directly overhead to act like a rim light to separate the object from the background at the top.
This technique will only work if you’re using a DSLR and studio strobes for lighting. You can’t do it with a point and shoot camera, or even a DSLR if you’re using continuous lighting like daylight florescent or hot tungsten lights.
The trick is that the shutter speed needs to be slow enough to let ambient light effect the image, the ambient light in this case being the internal light from the lamp. Because of the slow shutter speed, the room needs to be relatively dark. The strobes light the outside of the object properly and the lighting from inside shows because of the longer shutter speed. This technique is also called “dragging the shutter."
I use a DSLR with a macro lens to photograph artwork of any kind. When using studio strobes, I keep the camera set at 1/250 second, the sync shutter speed of the camera. And I set the F stop to the correct setting based on the amount of light the strobes are putting out. You can’t so this using the camera’s built in meter. The camera needs to be set on manual exposure. For maximum image quality, set the camera to the lowest ISO and set the shutter speed to the sync speed and let the F stop be determined by the intensity of the light. For the lighting I use, my ISO is 100, my shutter speed is 1/250 second and my F stop is normally F22.
So getting back to photographing objects that are lit from within. Keeping the F stop at F22, I reduced the shutter speed incrementally while shooting a picture at each new setting. Then I examined all the images on the computer and choose the one that looks the best. Reading the EXIF data of the chosen picture, I can see what the camera settings were. For the pictures of the wood lamps in the article on my web site, my shutter speed was set at 1/4 second to give me the perfect balance of allowing the internal lighting to show in the image. For the porcelain lamps, a shutter speed of 1/2 second gave me the correct exposure.
A link to the article on my web site which contains example photographs of porcelain lamps and wood lamps
Any additional suggestions or questions, e-mail me or call 412-401-8100.
To see the examples of my art photography or improved jury images. I also do free image evaluations and can also make suggestions on streamlining your artist statement.
http://bermangraphics.com/digital-jury-resources/jury-slide-photography.htm
http://bermangraphics.com/digital-jury-resources/fixing-jury-images.htm
At any time, artists can call me with questions 412-401-8100
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
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