Seeing reflections of lights

[DDirector]

I was looking at some pictures and watching some clips...
looking at the bts stuff, I see a whole bunch of reflections of lights off of cars and glasses.
But looking at the final product, I dont see any.

I tried lighting a car once, but no matter where the lights were placed on the wide, you could see a reflection of the light.
Whether done during the day or night - on cars or someones glasses.

Is there a way to prevent such things?

 

[J Davis]

BTS footage would have a different angle (and therefore a different reflection) to the takes. Positioning for takes footage might not show reflections at all.

Also post might be taking out the reflections

 

[eswaranb]

I have used anti-dulling spray with some success. That makes the surface more matte-like and while you still see some reflected light, it's not very distracting. I have had situations where the reflected light is clearly visible, but I have come to realize that people don't notice such things if more interesting things are going on in the frame.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

I was looking at some pictures and watching some clips...
looking at the bts stuff, I see a whole bunch of reflections of lights off of cars and glasses.
But looking at the final product, I dont see any.

I tried lighting a car once, but no matter where the lights were placed on the wide, you could see a reflection of the light.
Whether done during the day or night - on cars or someones glasses.

Is there a way to prevent such things?

In the case of cars an other reflective or simireflective objects, a large 'soft' light is often used... One set up that I saw a few months ago, had a huge balloon light, on the order of an aircraft hangar's worth of bigness for the set.

The 'cheap' equivalent is an overcast day...

Then with the overall 'soft' light, one needs small lights to pick up the specular highlights, and placed so distant that they do not cause any 'shadowing' (well they do cause shadowing but the intensity is so low they are 'melded' into the overall illumination...) but are just 'reflective'.

In the case of moving objects, as mentioned 'sprays' or anti reflective coatings (such as on glasses) are frequently used.

 

[Shooter]

When one lights a car (and anything else in fact) ....one is trying to see the reflection of the Source Light.

All light we see is "reflected" light. (Light is invisible to the eye and to the camera.)

Specific to highly reflective objects ... like a car...one needs to make sure that the source light is clean and set/positioned to reflect how and where you want it.

Huge sources up close are usually required due to the contours of the surfaces. They tend to compress the size of the source.

Lighting a car is an exercise in sculpting and painting the surfaces with the light sources.

Lighting a glamour / advertising shot of a car is more complex than say lighting a car for a movie where it appears in a street scene. That scenario one would light the surrounds eg the buildings..so they reflect in the car.


Think about this reflection thing another way.

If you photograph a person in a mirror...you light the person...not the mirror.

 

[Airboxlights]

Lighting cars (or other curved reflective objects) is all about black and white objects. The curved mirror you're shooting is going to show you everything, so make everything either a white luminous object or a black object. Those are the only things that won't look like "something". You'll find yourself spending a lot of time moving around solids and large pieces of beadboard or foamcore or the like to move areas of dark and bright reflections around on the curved surface. You're going to reflect everything, that's the facts of the mirror. You can make everything look innocuous and natural, or else you can frame out the offending part. Say your camera is right up near a curved wheelwell. If you're looking right at the curved wheelwell fairing, you'll definitely see yourself, but if you're looking down the length of the car, there's room to leave the prominent reflection of yourself out of frame off to one side or the other. As far as lighting, you'll do better if your sources are large and soft. Then you can see them, they'll just look like curved white reflections.

The same principle applies to any shiny multisurfaced object. When lighting plates of hot n fresh glistening food on cooking shows, I usually make some kind of a white box out of white or clear corroplast to put the food in with lights outside the box, and sliding pieces of black foam core around to introduce dark areas to the otherwise uniform field of white. That would work well with product shots of spoons and things like that. And don't wear colorful outfits.