User:Branko/Some experiments with lighting
An example of different light sources:
a) A regular light bulb high above the scene. Was on in every photo (if only to make sure I could see what was going on).
b) Two spots, on or off, using regular bulbs or daylight bulbs. An spot was positioned right above the camera, point straight at the scene. Another was hovering over the scene on the left.
c) The camera's built-in flash, on or off.
Photos:
1) Daylight spots on, flash off.
2) Spots and flash off.
3) Spots off, flash on.
4) Regular spots on, flash off.
The daylight bulbs are two 60W Philips ones, as shown in this DYO lightbox tutorial. Unfortunately, I forgot to check what the colour temperature and CRI for this bulb are. Philips and GE produce other lamps though that should be ideal for emulating daylight, at only a slightly higher price. (Apparently these things are big in the winter depression industry -- can you imagine, CPing and feeling happy? :-))
The b/w fragments were produced using the Threshold function in the GIMP. The two spot-lit photos required no further processing; the middle watershed for the Threshold function was just fine (i.e. the contrast between text and paper was enough).
At the end I used white cloth on the left and the right of the scene as a reflector, which made the pictures slightly darker, but which also as good as killed any residual shadows.
