Recently, Les George asked me to shoot a couple of his latest knives. I wanted to run my usual montage style but also wanted to create something ala Tactical Knives Magazine (hopefully they’ll end up in the mag soon). Its been a while since I did a “how-to” post so I decided to share my lighting setup.

The big A/C powered lights are up in my loft and there was no way I was going up there and working on a scorching July afternoon, so I decided to keep it compact and set up on the kitchen table with two small flashes (580ex and 430ex II). I got one of them set up on a light stand behind the tent and up high for my main light. Its triggered by a Pocket Wizard and set manually to about 1/2 power. Its going to be “carpet bombing” the whole picture. The tent will diffuse it and create a pretty soft even light on the knives. The diffusion material I am using is Grafix Matte Acetate in .005 thickness. (The tent frame itself is made from PVC pipe). I used to use tracing paper for a diffuser but the light just wasn’t hard enough for me. Jim Cooper gave me the idea to use this stuff instead which lets a bit more light through. The knives are so small and the light so close, I can work at ISO 100 at around f16 even with small lights like this. When you’re zooming in close on a product this size, its a good idea to stop down to f11 or more for good depth of field.

My second light is just going to create the blue accent. You can see it clamped to the stairwell with a Justin Clamp if you look real hard! The thing on the front of it is a Honl grid, which will help prevent the light from spilling all over the place. It also, of course has a blue color gel taped over the flash head.

The above is a picture I snapped with only the gelled accent light turned on. You can see there is no ambient exposure and the accent light is doing pretty much what its supposed to do, lighting a sliver of the knife frames and basically not getting in the way of the rest of the picture. Whenever I use a rim light or accent light, I always snap a couple frames with all the other lights turned off, just to see what its hitting. (This works good for portraiture too when adjusting a hair light for example). If Memory serves, I think the accent light was set at about 1/32 power. I’ll tell you a secret- I don’t use a light meter anymore. Sold it on ebay in fact. I blast away and use the LCD and histogram to give me the info I need.

Side note- if this post makes you want to run to Lowe’s and build a light tent from PVC pipe and start taking pictures of your forks and spoons, pick up a pack of this putty too. Its indispensable for product shots. Not only will it help you tilt your items to exactly the right angle, it will help secure them so you don’t like, scratch up a $500 knife or something. (doh!).  It does’nt leave anything gunky on the products which is nice.

Once your lights are all dialed in, it doesn’t hurt to reach into your bag of gels and try a couple different accent colors. Just keep some alternate shots in case your customer happens to prefer red or purple or pink. One more great thing about small flashes, color gels come about 4x oversize and you can cut them up and have some extras for when these get old and crumply.

Thanks for reading!

Update- Published in Knives Illustrated! Special thanks to Les George for sending me a scan.

Popular Posts:

• Optimizing your Photos for Facebook
• Taking Pictures on a White Background
• Lens Scratch Test, Canon
• Getting Accurate Colors – Setting White Balance With a Target