Adventures in Lighting, Part 2

[ChrisM]

My quest to take a decent picture of my nihonto continues. Today I had a few hours to get things going, and ended up on the following setup:

1. 2x GVM 48" Lights. These lights are stunning, as they're fully adjustable for temperature, brightness, color, and even patterns. They run off AC or via batteries. Controls can be driven via DMX lighting controllers, or (as I did) via the GVM IOS App. These allow me to adjust brightness on both lights without actually having to physically touch anything. I went for the two-light package, complete with large pelican case and some other accessories. Not cheap, but I always get lots of use out of fun lighting kits... 
2. Wide plexiglass. 
3. Standard "Big black sheet" as a backdrop. 
4. Nikon D5 w/ 50mm F/1.4G on a tripod and ball-head. 
5. Fully tethered shooting via Lightroom to my laptop. 

 

Doing everything via Tripod and tethering allowed lighting adjustments, focus adjustments, and in-camera photo adjustments without having to actually touch the setup. Physically moving the lights around could be done pretty easily. 

 

The keys for me were:

1. The closer I put the tube lights to the blade, the better everything looked. 
2. Height adjustments on the lights made a big difference. The lights along the blade edge are flat on the plexiglass, whereas the light on the back side is lifted up about 2 inches. 
3. Turn off all the other lights in the room, so the only source of lighting is the GVM lights. 

 

The Wakazashi image below is a single shot image, with a minor global curves adjustment in Photoshop. While the background was already pretty dark, I used the "Delete Background" button in Photoshop and it worked flawlessly. 

[kissakai]

Lights look to be out of stock

[ChrisM]

8 hours ago, kissakai said:

Lights look to be out of stock

Looks to be a US vs UK issue. You could try ordering directly from GVM. 

[ChrisM]

Looking at this anew, the Kissakai needs more light. The different angle makes it not work with the same lights in a single shot.

 

I have an image with the Kissakai properly exposed, but this will need a bit of compositing.