I thought that, as I am always recommending Ott-Lites and ones similar to them, I should offer some more solid advice. One
good thing about them is that they burn much cooler than incandescents. They can be closer to a camera, safely.
Work in a darkened room or in the evening; the mini-fluorescents in these
lamps should
work alone, not fight with other light.
I took the tiny pocket camera (like a cell phone whithout a phone, so to speak) and tried to show the whole set up (pardon mess; last week I
had a possum and
had to move stuff around).
In the photos, you see my baking
dish, my
glass, my camera with 60mm Macro on copy stand, also the electronic release;* the coin in the illustration is a 26mm of Nicopolis of
Septimius Severus (I thought you'd ask).
I set camera on Aperture Priority and the timer has 10 seconds to allow any jiggle to settle down. My old eyes in glasses love automatic focus. EXIF reports that it was at f.10 for 1/6 sec. with two
lamps.
OK. Notice that Trajan's
portrait is more fully and faithfully rendered using 3
lamps together for even illumination. The
reverse, however, which also preserves less relief, to show
Herakles accompanied by
his young friend Hylas, profits from turning off the desk
lamp placed at ±1h and letting the more distant standing
lamp suffice for fill in. I make it a rule always to employ the desk
lamp at 10h; you can take pretty
good photos with this one position (the one the
ANS years ago taught us to use, by the way). Most of the pictures on my web site were taken with the one
lamp. At the bottom of my baking
dish is my 18% reflectivity neutral gray card, from the photo
shop (but any neutral gray will do). I do not 'paper-doll' my images (as if they were cut-outs pasted on colored poster board) and you can plainly see from my finished (finished for study) products how many and where the
lamps were.
Pat L. *I seem to have left off the electronic release when making the mock-up.
CLICK TO ZOOMI want to thank Andreas for sending the Hylas coin to me.
