Crazy Day at Work - What do you think?

[Chuck Lee]

Got a call from the Engineering manager where I work during the day as a contract engineer. He said that one of the guys in marketing needed a photo of some sensors immediately. What they had was not working. Needless to say I was all smiles. Took my strobes and a few extras with me to work today. This is what I gave them.





5D, 100mm f2.8 Macro @ f9, 1/125sec ISO 50


You get to guess # of lights and # of composited images.

[Jarhead5811]

Looks great! What are they?


2 lights?


2 composited images? one with upright things, one with the other?

[Chuck Lee]

The two long things are a light curtain pair. The others are magnetic interlocks. These are sensors that are required in Europe on our machine to meet CE safety requirements.

2 lights?

More than two lights.

2 composited images? one with upright things, one with the other?

Close, here's one shot all lights, no composite:

[Sean Setters]

Well, I'm never all that great at dissecting scenes..but I'll give it a go.


From what I can tell, the shadows cast by the vertical props wouldn't actually stop where they do--they would cast a shadow onto the units lying down (I believe). That said, I don't see the strong highlights on the backside of the vertical units that I would expect to see. Is that the glare of a reflector in the shiny front part of the vertical unit? Hmm...


Well, for the units lying down I'd say there was a strobe camera right and pointed downward and slightly toward the camera. At least that's what the shadows say.


I think it could actually be done with 1 light, 3 pictures.


To hell with it. Just tell me. :-)


EDIT: Well, I was way off. You did quite a bit of post with it, didn't you? I thought you were actually using a blue (is it blue?) piece of seamless paper as the background.

[lculpin]

Hmmm... I'd say 3, maybe 4 lights.... as for the composite no way to tell... 3? (My new lucky number :P)

[Chuck Lee]

Hmmm... I'd say 3, maybe 4 lights.... as for the composite no way to tell... 3? (My new lucky number :P)

Great guess'n Iculpin!!

[Chuck Lee]

Sean, you disect well.


Shadow assumption: Correct


Glare assumption: CorrectThat is reflected light off a large photoflex screen. I wanted large speculars...remember Lighting 102.


Blue assumption/correction: Correct


3 pictures: Correct...excellent work


1 Light: Wrong"3": 1) Snooted (Honl 8") 1/2 CTB rear/above camera rightfull power 2)Large Specular bouncedFull CTO gel full power 3)Key-front light1/2 CTO gel 1/16th power very close (you can see the head in the last shot.) I was trying to cut down on the back shadows.


The second image, (all lights, one shot) unfortunately, I believe is the one they're going to use. I love a snooted blue rim light but couldn't get it to fly with all the white involved. Actually, that's just a piece of cheap poster paper curled up to make a seamless BG. So, I figured the only way it was going to fly was to build it from the back light up. I turned off the other strobes and shot........





To my suprise the snooted backlight made a really nice triangular highlight around the light curtain pair. The problem is the two long dark black shadows caused by the light curtain sensors. That's easy enough to remedy........





So the final image is just a composite of the three with this one being the first (before I moved the sensors....oh crap! take two!)





I did a few takes. 20-25 shots to get this figured out. This is the first time I've tried a composite to control light and color. I thought it turned out sort of cool. Whether they use or not is no biggy. It was a fun assignment and fun to get to share something here.

[Colin]

sweet result.

[crosbyharbison]

well did they like it? and did you get paid for it? looks mighty professional to me

[btaylor]

Yeah Chuck it looks fantastic. Good stuff.