# Getting rid of bulb glare



## DonInKansas (Mar 30, 2012)

Hey all,

I'm taking photos of items in a room in my basement (about 6x12), and kind of doing with what I have.  I'm using a Sony DSC-F717.  I'm shooting in a corner I have painted white on a white table.  I have two 500w halogen lights for lighting similar to this:

Buy.com - 1000W STAND LIGHT

My photos turn out at least editable except I'm fighting glare on the items from the bulbs themselves.  I've read up on diffusing light but that doesn't seem to help.  Any idea how I can level out the light?


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## Mrgiggls (Mar 30, 2012)

The easiest thing I can think of would be to stretch a wire or rope and hang a white sheet in front of your flood lights to create a very large make-shift diffuser.. 

Short of that maybe just try to photograph from angles where the bulbs reflection isn't coming straight into your lens.


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## cgipson1 (Mar 30, 2012)

Google Angle of reflections.....  Family of reflections

or a polarizer (CPL) filter if have one, and place the lights at 90 degree to the angle of view. 

Or you can polarize the light source (difficult with what you have) and use a polarizer on your lens.. that totally eliminates it.

You might also consider a lightbox (google it or amazon it)


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## fokker (Mar 30, 2012)

I've read a few posts from Big Mike about something called the 'family of angles' and reflectance, I don't completely understand it myself but maybe try googling it.

I think essentially it just means move either the light source or the camera to an angle where you don't see any reflection.


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## cgipson1 (Mar 30, 2012)

fokker said:


> I've read a few posts from Big Mike about something called the 'family of angles' and reflectance, I don't completely understand it myself but maybe try googling it.
> 
> I think essentially it just means move either the light source or the camera to an angle where you don't see any reflection.



Exactly.. angle of reflections..  I highly recommend the book Light, Science and Magic... it rocks!  Amazon.com: Light Science and Magic, Fourth Edition: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting (9780240812250): Fil Hunter, Paul Fuqua, Steven Biver: Books


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## Big Mike (Mar 30, 2012)

Read the book 'Light: Science & Magic'.  
It will teach you that the glare that you're seeing, is a result of the 'direct reflection' properties of the object that you are shooting.  If you don't want to see those reflections, then you have to place your lights 'outside the family of angles'.  That's easy enough if your glare is showing up on a flat surface.  But if your object is rounded, then your family of angles will be everywhere except behind the object, which obviously won't work.  So if you're shooting a rounded object that has properties of direct reflection, you won't be able to take the shot without the lights showing up as direct reflections.  (Imagine shooting a mirrored X-mas tree ball....no matter what you do, the lights (and the camera) will always show up reflected in the surface....that's a worst case scenario).

So knowing that you can't shoot without the reflections....you can change how they look.  So rather than having them show up as blobs of glare, if you change the size (relative to the object) and the shape of your lights, you can change how that reflection looks.  For example, if you make your light source huge (by using a diffusion material etc), you can attempt to 'fill the family of angles'....which will spread that glare out over the surface of the object, which will probably look better than the small glare.

*edit* You guys beat me to it.  :er:


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