The Armour Archive

Let's get right to the point: what does it take to make stunning pictures of shiny armour, in a controled light environment?

I know all the basics about cameras, exposure, depth of focus, etc. What I want to know is how to fix the lighting to get great pictures. The other day I read a description on how to take pictures of knives, using a light tent. Does anyone have any experience with something similar for armour?

Here are some pictures I took myself in Munich, the first one turned out quite OK, given the conditions, but the second shows a whole lot of horrible effects. How to avoid the obvious and hidden pitfalls?
http://www.astro.lu.se/~ralph/pics/tmp_ ... age027.jpg
http://www.astro.lu.se/~ralph/pics/tmp_ ... age032.jpg

[edit:] The pictures are just to get the discussion going. They were taken in a museum without any way of affecting the lighting. Let's just assume I want to build myself a simple studio, and get things right froom the start.

I keep thinking of this guy on the net selling a kettle, highly polished, with the picture showing his reflection in the kettle. He was somehow only wearing his underwear...

Alrighty,

I'll take a shot at this. After having looked at the pictures you posted I'd say you're running into the "too much contrast" problem. Basically your highlights are either blown out or your shadows are too dark. What you need to do is lower the contrast, there are several ways you can do this:

#1 Shoot on a cloudy day outside, clouds naturally diffuse the sun's light, thus softening the shadows and dimming the highlights. The obvious problem with this solution is that it's not exactly "controlled" lighting....but it is cheap...if you can afford to wait for a good cloudy day. (You don't want it too cloudy or everything will be overly dark.)

#2 Shoot on sunny days...but in medium shade...hey...it works...sometimes.

#3 Try a Natural Density filter (ND filter) if you have access to an SLR camera...ND filters help limit the contrast in a picture.

#4 Use lights...not a flash. Flashes are generally too harsh...not natural enough, and unless your camera has a variable flash they're usually too bright for anything even sort of close up.

#5 I don't know what you have for lights...but if you have anything sort of "studio lighting-esq" like spotlights or floodlights, then you could try bounce/reflected lighting....this is pretty simple to do, just set up pieces of white posterboard around your subject (but not visible to the camera) and aim your lights at the posterboard instead of directly at the subject. The result should be a nicely diffused lighting.

#6 The light box/tent (also called a "softbox")....the princeable is pretty simple, the subject goes inside, you aim your lights at the outside, and the tent/box diffuses the light (just like clouds do with the sun).

Well that's all I can think of right now, I hope that helps.

The Leviathan

please read:

http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=39856


On the light tent. I light tent is great, it is the professional way of eliminating shadows. Unfortunately, the cost for a light tent exponentially grows with the size of th tent needed. While a small tent (one good for using with knives) is relatively cost efficent, a large one needed for things like breastplates etc. may be very expensive to buy.

In the link above you can approximate a light tent with multiple light sources.

if you have low light you can use longer exposures, which you'll want t tripod (or a small desktop tripod, both can be found at best buy).

It's hard to get permission to use a tripod in a museum. Informal museum photography is always a challenge.

For impromptu museum photos, the neutral density filter is your best bet. The biggest obstacle is the glare from the glass.

the closer you can get to the glass when shooting in museums the better. If you can place the lens on the glass great.

Also shooting from angles instead of straight on will make the flash bounce away from the camera instead of back into it.

Check to see how the piece is lit in the display case. Keep the light source out of the photograph and preferably over your right or left shoulder.

Most museums don't allow flash so for me that is not an issue except for home photography. My biggest problem is the combination of not enough lighting and glare spots off of the glass cases. Would a polorizing filter accomplish the same thing for photos of armor in glass casses as a neutral density filter?

A polarizing filter will help some, but it won't work as well as a neutral density filter. Polarizing filters are for enhancing color saturation and depth, but they do reduce glare a little. They don't do very much indoors, though. Neutral density filters are specifically for reducing glare. Just remember that if you use one you either need a larger aperture, or slow the shutter speed.

Hi Ralph,

Photography is my other hobby. The cheapest way (by far) to set up your light tent is with white or light grey sheets. The sheets diffuse the light and prevent it from causing as much glare. If your armour is highly polished then the light grey will probably look better since white reflections are much more noticeable than grey. Just sew five sides of a cube together and suspend from a square frame on the top. Your light sources should be outside the tent.

Cameron

Ralph I'm sorry this post will be of no help to what so ever, but do you have more of those german gothic pic's I'm drooling on my keyboard right now. Never been to Munich, don't know if I'll ever get to. so pleeeeaase
Thanks
Ken

Orazio wrote:A polarizing filter will help some, but it won't work as well as a neutral density filter. Polarizing filters are for enhancing color saturation and depth, but they do reduce glare a little. They don't do very much indoors, though.

Polarizing filters reduce glare a lot, assuming you've got it turned the right direction, and assuming the reflecting surface present the same angle to the light source. Not so easy if there are light sources all around.

Neutral density filters are specifically for reducing glare. Just remember that if you use one you either need a larger aperture, or slow the shutter speed.

Uh - it's sort of the other way around. Neutral density filters do nothing for glare or reflections. They also do nothing for contrast. They merely reduce the overall light, without introducing a colour shift. You start with the need either to extend the exposure time for some artistic effect (intentional blurring, such as softening a waterfall), or to widen the aperture to reduce the depth of field (such as to photograph a flower blossom in focus and yet keep the leaves and dirt behind it blurred). If doing either of those results in being unable to compensate enough by adjusting the other setting, then you throw on a ND filter.
Or, it may be that you got your camera loaded with very fast film and you find yourself shooting in a snow field on a bright sunny day. The ND filter will allow you to pretend you have slower film, and get more flexible settings with the aperture and shutter speed, ie. not being forced to work with either the absolute shortest exposure time, or minimum aperture.

Thanks for the feedback everybody.

I have successfully used a polarising filter to get rid of the glare on the glass. It works best without flash, and positioned to get any reflections in the glass at very roughly 45 degrees incidence. Then the filter should be aligned to get minimum reflection.
This works great on glass, but to subdue the bright reflections on polished armour it works only marginally.

I'll definitely give the light tent a try here at home. As always, I think the best way to find out how well something works is to go ahead and try it.

Regarding the ND filter: a similar effect can be obtained by adjusting the exposure, to underexpose the picture. Later (digital) processing can be used to adjust the grey levels into an acceptable range. The attached images show these different exposures, to bring out the details in the bright parts, and similarly in the dark parts. Getting both right in the same picture is not easy, especially not in a museum with no way to control the light. Though in this particular case, the museum attendant was willing to help by opening or closing blinds on the windows. Unfortunately, it did not make much of a difference for this light setting.