I had the opportunity to work with Pat and Arlan Christ of Kutztown to photograph their impressive quilt collection for a catalog. After a month and a half of planning, the photo shoot was executed on January 22 & 23 in the lighting studio of the Sharadin Arts Building. In all, an impressive 50-something quilts were photographed. The sizes of the quilts ranged from 2'x2' to 10'x10'! I certainly encountered more quilts in two days than I probably will in an entire lifetime.
Initially I was very nervous to begin this project, having no experience with photographing quilts before. My lighting scheme was highly improvised because I wasn't certain of the "right" way to do it, but I managed to find a set-up that both worked for me and accomplished the job. The quilts were hung from a metal rod which I had placed in front of a large white paper backdrop. I used two Calumet Travelite 750 strobe lights shot into 40'' umbrellas to both sides of the quilt. My camera was set at an ISO of 100 and I typically stayed around f. 16 and 1/200s.
The most challenging reoccurrence was trying to compensate for blotchy shadows on the right side of the quilt. I think the strobe on that side was losing bulb strength or something, so I had to keep re-adjusting my lights pretty frequently. Some of the quilts had pretty deep creases in them from being folded for so long, so they would often cause problems with lighting as well, so I had to move the strobes up and back depending on how much light I needed to diffuse to hide the shadow in the 'crease crater', as I call them. Also, and this is unexplainable by me, when I would increase my shutter speed to anything above 1/250, I would get strange black shadows on the bottom of my image.
On January 23, I returned back to the studio to photograph a series of quilt-related items such as bobins, spool-holders, and fabric samples. I used a plexiglass light table, two strobes with the 40'' umbrellas, and my 85mm 1.8 lens.
Overall, the experience was a great one and although very tedious, I actually had fun doing it. My clients were extremely friendly and helpful and from the in-camera frames I showed them along the way, they seemed to be very pleased with my images. I am putting all the files onto discs and then passing them off to a Communication Design student to handle the Photoshop corrections. I will be sure to make some scans of the catalog once it is published to post.
In 35mm SLR cameras the shutter opens across, not from the center. The black you are getting is because you went above your sync speed - If you go above your sync speed the camera can't capture the light output fast enough so the half of the image that opens later captures no light exposure from the studio lights, just ambient (and there probably wasn't enough ambient light to do anything). Higher shutter speeds are only needed for moving subjects, so it will not hurt to stay at 200/sec or lower. Just remember that only your ISO and F-stop will adjust how much light you capture from your studios.
ReplyDelete