# Taking pictures of sunglasses without a GLARE!  Help!



## superfly (Feb 24, 2011)

Hello,

I am trying to figure out the art to taking pictures of sunglasses without the glare.  I'm using a setup similar to this:

http://www.theswitchboards.com/images/articles_lindsay_photosetup.jpg

I'm using a frosted plastic tub.  I have white interfacing lining the inside of the tub and it does drape over some of the tub on the outside to help diffuse the light.  It folds over the sides and the top.  I then used a piece of poster board for my seamless white background.  I have two 60 watt day light bulbs on each side of the container and one on the back side that shines through the top of the tub.  

I have my camera set on custom setting.  ISO is set at 50.  I have it in macro mode because I'm doing closeups.  I have the light meter set at +1 - this seems to make my background whiter than the 0 setting, but at the same time I keep this setting at +1 and still have some gray background instead of bright white which is what I want.  If I set it at anything above +1 it becomes to bright and almost makes it seem like I have my flash on as some of the stems/arms are not visible.   For my white balance tungsten seems to work the best for the whitest background.  I've tried them all, this one has the best outcome for my setup.  

In doing all of this I still have get a glare on part of the lenses.  Any idea what could be causing this.  Here is a pic of something I took earlier.  This is actually one of the better ones.  You can see the shadow of the glasses on the poster board as well.  The charcoal lenses show the glare on the lenses really bad.


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## Trever1t (Feb 24, 2011)

try a polerizer yet?


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## superfly (Feb 24, 2011)

No, is this something I buy to attach to my camera?


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## aprock83 (Feb 24, 2011)

exactly what i was gonna say...lol


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## Big Mike (Feb 24, 2011)

Welcome to the forum.

Part of the problem is that parts of your background are too bright...and maybe your camera & lens are prone to flare.  So parts of the glasses are getting washed out.  Try to even out the lighting on your backdrop, that should help.  This may involve finding a way to get the glasses up off of the background, so that you can light it evenly (without putting too much light onto the glasses themselves).  This would also help the shadow in front of the glasses....but it's probably easier said than done.  One technique would be to cut out the background completely (in Photoshop), then add back in a fake shadow.  I saw this done on an old episode of 'The Photoshop Guys'.  Try looking it up.  

Another issue are the reflections on the glasses.  They have properties of direct reflection, so any light source (including any of the backdrop or light tent) will show up when the angle from the camera reflects them in the glasses.  In other words, the white set up around the glasses, will be reflected on them.  And because there are curved parts and several different angles, you probably can't get rid of the reflection, so you have to work with it.  The idea of the light tent, is to fill all the angles with whiteness...so that all the reflections are white.


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## superfly (Feb 24, 2011)

What do you mean by "work with it" when referring to the reflection?  Does this mean I just have to put up with it?  or are you stating that I need to try shooting from different angles?  btw...thanks for your comments.  I need all the help I can get.  

I'm trying to get good enough shots so that I don't have to photoshop - too time consuming.  But if I must.......


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## KmH (Feb 24, 2011)

Yes, he means you have to try different setups.

You could also get the book - Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting (see "family of angles")

It's the bible of product photography lighting.

Another option is to hire a professional to make the images.

More lighting shiny things tips here: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...aphy/207224-how-shoot-all-silver-jewelry.html


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## Big Mike (Feb 24, 2011)

Yes, by 'working with' the reflection, I mean that you can try different set ups, working toward what you like best....but also that because you know what is causing the reflection, you can manipulate it.  

For example, if you had a light source in front of the glasses that was a horizontal strip, the reflection would likely be a horizontal line.  If you had a vertical strip as your light source, the highlight would be a vertical line.  The proximity from the light to the object, would determine the size of the reflection...and so on.


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## superfly (Feb 25, 2011)

OK so I worked with my angle some.  Got better results moving the lights further away from the objects being photographed.  They don't necessarily need to be perfect, but I would like for them to look the same, background, positioning, lighting, things like that.  This was one of my better outcomes from last night moving the lights around.


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## superfly (Mar 1, 2011)

OK so I worked on my lighting some more, I think I'm getting this.  Thanks guys for your help.  I think I'll browse around and read some other posts to get some new ideas on photography.  This forum appears to be very helpful.


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## KmH (Mar 1, 2011)

Work on the depth-of-field too.

You can use black cards to subtract light in places.


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## superfly (Mar 2, 2011)

KmH said:


> Work on the depth-of-field too.
> 
> You can use black cards to subtract light in places.



Depth of field?  Can you explain?    and black cards?  some ideas on where I would place these black cards.  Not sure I understand.  I'm still fighting with the grayish looking backgrounds too.  It's getting annoying.  I'm working on a complete white background, but yet when I download the pics to view on my laptop the background appears more gray than white.  *sigh*


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## Breaux (Mar 2, 2011)

Depth of Field:  Using a smaller aperture with a longer exposure will help bring more of the sunglasses into focus.  But using too small of an aperture can reduce overall sharpness.  "Depth of Field" refers to the range of distances from ther camera that are reasonably in focus.


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## EckoZero (Mar 2, 2011)

Hi Superfly,

Probably not the best person to be answering this but I'll give it a go!
Depth of field refers to how much of the shot is in focus - a wider depth of field leaves more of the shot in focus whereas a narrow depth of field restricts focus to smaller areas.

Imagine shooting a flower in a field of grass - a wider depth of field would show the flower in focus with the grass fairly well focused behind it.
A narrower depth of field would show the flower in focus but the grass behind it blurred out (this is often used in portrait photography)

(NB - someone will correct me if I'm wrong... it might be the other way round for depth of field - narrower = more in focus for example - I always get them backwards, like low and high apertures =( sad times!)

For this, a narrower depth of field would give more impact to the sunglasses as the shot wouldn't be "cluttered" with too much detail.
For example, if you focused just on the front of the sunglasses so the arms were out of focus.


In regards to your lighting problem you could try setting the exposure compensation (EV) to compensate for the background.

I can't remember which direction they go (I'm rubbish with higher/lower stuff at the moment!) but play around with it - let it look a bit blown out on your camera, check that the histogram isn't pulled completely to the right and then check it on your laptop =)


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## KmH (Mar 2, 2011)

superfly said:


> KmH said:
> 
> 
> > Work on the depth-of-field too.
> ...


You can read a bit about DOF here: Understanding Depth of Field in Photography.

I also recommend the following DOF calculator link, because it displays the DOF more graphically: http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/calc.htm

The background looks more gray than white because it's likely your photos are under exposed.

Your main problem seems to be you do not yet know enough about photography, or photographic lighting, to do a good job photographing your products. It's much more involved and technical than many people realize.

Few laptops have accurate enough displays to be used for critical evaluation of commercial images. Most laptops have TN (Twisted Nematic) type displays while advanced amateurs and pros use IPS (In-Plane Switching) type displays.

Laptops are also notorious for having less than adequate GPU's (graphic processor unit) on their video cards too.


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## superfly (Mar 2, 2011)

Breaux said:


> Depth of Field:  Using a smaller aperture with a longer exposure will help bring more of the sunglasses into focus.  But using too small of an aperture can reduce overall sharpness.  "Depth of Field" refers to the range of distances from ther camera that are reasonably in focus.



OK this may be a stupid question, if it is I apologize in advance.  

Is the aperture controlled by changing the light meter?  I have my light meter set on 1 1/3, anything beyond that washes out part of my photo.


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## EckoZero (Mar 2, 2011)

What camera are you using? Most DSLRs will have an aperture priority mode (A on Nikons, Av on Canons).
Set to that and scroll down to the fastest aperture (lowest f number) that you can


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## superfly (Mar 7, 2011)

EckoZero said:


> Hi Superfly,
> 
> 
> In regards to your lighting problem you could try setting the exposure compensation (EV) to compensate for the background.



Exposure compensation - how would i change this?

And as far as the other post about aperture, I use a canon and I know I have seen the Av option b4.  I will try the suggestions on that and maybe that will help my pics look like they should.  I know I've seen the Av option, I'll have to play around with that and see how to change it to the lowest setting.


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## EckoZero (Mar 7, 2011)

Not sure how to set exposure compensation on a Canon as I'm a Nikon man myself, but there should be an option in your shooting menu to set it.

Check the manual and it should tell how to set it. Have a look, then play around with exposure compensation until the whites come out as white as you need them


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## superfly (Mar 7, 2011)

Thanks Ecko.  I appreciate your help.  Learning a lot here.  I actually can not locate the manual, I will continue looking or try to find this online.  I messed around with the aperture and it does make a huge difference in the quality of the pic.  Gives it much more detail I thought.  Still gotta mess around with the background, but the detail seems better.  This is not easy!  I had no idea good pictures would be so hard!


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## superfly (Mar 7, 2011)

Getting better!!!  thanks to all of you!


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## EckoZero (Mar 8, 2011)

The background doesn't look grey or washed out to me....
The shots are a little OOF though. Are you using your lens's autofocus?


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## superfly (Mar 9, 2011)

Autofocus?  Do all cameras have the autofocus ability?  I have noticed that some of the smaller logos seem out of focus and turn up blurry in some of my pics.  I noticed this today actually while shooting some of my X-Loops.  What do I look for when trying to turn on my autofocus?  Where would I find this?


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## Christie Photo (Mar 9, 2011)

EckoZero said:


> Hi Superfly,
> 
> Probably not the best person to be answering this but I'll give it a go!
> Depth of field refers to how much of the shot is in focus - a wider depth of field leaves more of the shot in focus whereas a narrow depth of field restricts focus to smaller areas.



That's a fine description of depth of filed.  I think "deep" and "shallow" are better words to use than "wide" and "narrow," but you did just fine.

I like that you used the word "restricts" since it reminds us the photographer has control over just what will come into acceptable focus.  Selective focus is a very useful tool.

-Pete


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## Twisted_Pixel (Mar 9, 2011)

Got round to installing an Exif viewer, so according to it, the OP is using a Canon PowerShot A630.

To the OP, I've got an IPS screen and the backdrop does not appear as grey here. Only a very slight difference to the white background of the forum interface.


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