Tabletop photography

I’m struggling through this quarantine for Covid-19. To pass the time I have been trying my hand at tabletop photography. I actually came up with two setups. One setup was with three softboxes and three Godox V860-II speed lights. The other setup was with two umbrellas and two inexpensive Godox TT520-II speed lights. In both cases I used a Canon 5D-III camera and either a 24/105mm or 100mm macro lens. Settings were ISO-200, F/16 aperture and 1/160 shutter speed.

Three light setup with examples.

Two light setup with examples. 

I hope this was helpful to someone. Let me know if you have any questions I will help if I can.

DIY Reflector

20” by 30” white foam core boards make excellent photography reflectors. They are available at stationary stores for three or four dollars each. There are any number of commercially available units to hold these foam core boards. But a quick DIY holder can be made from an old clip board and a spigot.

I drilled a ¼” hole about 3” up and center of the clip board. I mounted a spigot to the clip board with a ¼ - 20 bolt.

Mount the clip board in an umbrella bracket.

The clip board will hold the foam core board in a vertical or horizontal position.

Spring paper clip to the rescue.

This is a trick that a Facebook friend showed to me. Basically, there are two types of umbrella brackets. One type has a set screw that holds the umbrella in place. The other type has a metal spring that holds the umbrella in place. The set screw type will hold the umbrella solidly in place but will sometimes crush the umbrella shaft if it is hollow. The metal spring type will not always hole the umbrella solidly in place.

My Facebook friend applies two spring paper clips to the umbrella shaft before and after the umbrella bracket spring.

It works well on the new Godox S-2 bracket for holding a brolley solidly in place.

Centering up the flash

I like shooting with an umbrella, bounce or shoot through. They are light weight, easy to setup and take down. What I don’t like is that the flash set so high above center of the umbrella. So, I dug through my junk drawer for a cold shoe, a one-half inch 1/4-20 bolt, flat washer, lock washer, spigot and this little Nikon L-bracket. I don’t know where the Nikon L-bracket came from because I shoot a Canon camera. All put together it puts the center of the flash much closer to the center of the umbrella.

School Bus

Did you every try to light the inside of a school bus?

Senior Portrait

I took this photo on top of a little hill above the tree lined banks of the Mississippi River. This is a photo of a young lady I photographed two or three years back. I use my 70/200mm lens and a Godox AD360 strobe in a 42-inch bounce umbrella. Settings were ISO 200, shutter speed 1/100, aperture f/8. So, I move my light in and set it for f/8. I wanted to blur the background so I applied and 8X neutral density filter to the lens and opened the lens to f/2.8. The background became just snares of color no definition at all.

Product Photography

It has been a slow week so I worked on a product photography project that I have been wanting to do. I made a small shooting table and copied a lighting setup that I saw on YouTube. I was not able to get the totally white background that I wanted and some of the photo are not as sharp as I would like, but, it’s a start. I have to set up in my family room and this setup takes all the room I have to work with. I set my shooting table on a TV tray; way too low. I’m working on a way to mount the shooting table to a light stand so I can adjust the height. I will try a different lighting setup on my next shooting session.

Behind the scenes photo.

Lighting layout

Shooting table

Exploded view of shooting table parts