Hi All (including Grace, Lisa, Michael and Brian), For years I have
used lamp shades, plastic bowls, milk cartons, white ‘boxes’ ,
different kinds of plastic, reflectors of all sorts usually left
over from my professional photography days, lighting from the back,
from the side, lighting through different umbrellas, light boxes,
Blaine Lewis’s setup from his book…and on and on…because
that’s all there was. Michael just wrote 1262 beautiful words (us
nerds pop it into Word then look at the word count in the
properties…) on the ways and hazards of lighting and
reflections.
With the Cloud Dome, put it under the dome and shoot. That simple.
A shot takes about 30 seconds, maybe a minute at the most.
All the time I spent setting up reflectors, taping the milk jug to
the camera attached to the tripod, getting back drops, getting
filters for different lighting configurations, changing the flash, I
now plan on using to develop cute and tricky setups for the Cloud
Dome , which I will share as often as I come up with something
really really great.
The benefits of the Cloud Dome are A) No reflections what so ever
and B) No Hot spots and C) The ease of setting up and getting the
first picture. Just attach the camera, digital or 35mm, I use a
Nikon F5 with a 60mm Micro lens , turn on a light and shoot. The
Cloud Dome, made of plastic, acts like fiber optics and seems to
take the light at one spot, transfer the light all around the dome
so the object is being lit equally from all sides. It makes the
inside of the cloud dome ‘glow’ with light from a single source.
On my web page are samples of lighting using one and two lights
positioned at different locations around the perimeter of the Cloud
Dome. You can see how the jewelry piece is lighted with ‘surround
lighting’…(I just coined a new lighting word…). You can
have both surround lighting and still get highlights without hot
spots.
Thank you Cindy for the Cloud Dome...and you are welcome to use my
newly coined word if you read this…
Love and God Bless
-randy
Home 214-321-6253
Cell 214-280-7775
Work 469-775-6650
http://www.rocksmyth.com