Looking for recommendation on light kit

[bradfordswood]

I'm looking for a recommendation on a light kit for a beginner. I want to be able to shoot glass, (bottles, pint glasses, etc) indoors. I'd like to be able to minimize reflections and glare. The overhead lighting in my house creates reflections which I'd like to minimize or eliminate altogether.

Are strobes the way to go, or would something continuous be better? I do have a Canon Speedlite, but even that is hard to use without creating a nasty reflection. I've been looking at the Lowel EGO kits, but not sure if that would suit my needs or not.

Would like to spend around $200, if that is even possible. Thanks in advance for any comments/advise!

 

[AcutancePhotography]

Do you have the book

Light Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fuqua?

Before spending $200 (which may not buy you much), spend $30.00 on this book.

"I want to be able to shoot glass, (bottles, pint glasses, etc) indoors. I'd like to be able to minimize reflections and glare."

This book is a text book that addresses just this.

 

[LDS]

I'm looking for a recommendation on a light kit for a beginner. I want to be able to shoot glass, (bottles, pint glasses, etc) indoors. I'd like to be able to minimize reflections and glare.

The advice about reading "Light - Science & Magic" is very good. Glass needs the proper technique to be lit effectively - you can do it even with Speedlites, but you need to know where to put them and how to control their lights - and it could be done without spending much.
Once you learn it, you'll know what kind of lighting equipment you really need - and what else you need (i.e. backgrounds)
Strobes or continuous light won't make much difference (although some kind of subjects may be better lit with one or the other) - but especially for a beginner strobes with modeling light or continuous light are very useful to understand what happens.
Some continuous lights are cheaper than strobes, but may not be dimmed easily. Tungsten one may become very hot, fluorescent ones don't (but have other peculiarities), while LED can be still expensive.

 

[bradfordswood]

Thanks for the tip on the book.

The biggest thing for me is that I don't like seeing the flash of a speedlite reflect in the bottle. Seems to me like a continuous light would be better suited, but someone had suggested strobes to me. That's why I was asking.

 

[LDS]

The biggest thing for me is that I don't like seeing the flash of a speedlite reflect in the bottle. Seems to me like a continuous light would be better suited, but someone had suggested strobes to me. That's why I was asking.

It doesn't matter if it is a strobe or continuous light, when the camera shoots all it sees a continuos light anyway When you read that book, you'll understand why you see the reflection, and how to eliminate it. It depends only on the light source size, subject-light-camera angle, and the type of surface/shape you're lighting.

Not if the light is continuous or not, or the type of source. This kind of selection is made depending on the subject kind, easy of use, cost, etc. For example flowers and food may not like "hot" continuous light sources. Strobes don't make people shrink pupils and eyes like continuous one may do. While continuous has no recharge times, and let you setup lighting more easily.

If you are really interested in lighting, learn the basics, and everything else will become much easier. Otherwise you will pick up fragmented advices here and there, and you won't know what to trust or not.

 

[lintoni]

A bit of lateral thinking - as you're worried about reflections on the glass, have you tried a polarising filter?

 

[RLPhoto]

I think you should start with strobes because your shooting indoors on products most of the time. Paul C buff equipment is vast, affordable and will supply you with 99% of all the mods you'd ever need. Their service is top notch too.

but you should also study on the basics of how light works and how to shape light. You can be amazed at what one speedlite can accomplish.

 

[Skirball]

If you want a beginner lighting kit get a couple Yongnuo 560 III (make sure to get the III) at $70 each, and a YN 560-TX transmitter ($50). If you want to save $30 you can get the RF-602 or RF-603 transmitter, but the one I mentioned is worth it. It's not going to get much cheaper than that, and yet it has features that systems three times as much don't have. You'll eventually need stands and modifiers but you can start with the little plastic feet that come with the flash and sheets of white posterboard.

Once you start really looking critically at glass photography you'll notice that you don't eliminate reflection, you just control it. Without reflections you wouldn't see anything, unless it's colored. Even then, well placed reflections add dimension to the photos. Once you get more advanced you'll probably find out that for truly clean images good lighting is only half of it, the other half is done in Photoshop.

Get a basic lighting kit, go over to Strobist and start learning:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html

And then grab your glasses and practice some basic rim lighting, like most all of us did when we were learning flash. It's like drawing an orange in art class, everyone starts with the basics.

 

[LDS]

A bit of lateral thinking - as you're worried about reflections on the glass, have you tried a polarising filter?

That's not the way you do it most of the times, especially because it may not always be effective. When you can control light, there are far better ways to avoid unwanted reflections.