Photographing Reflective Surfaces – Budget Friendly Way
In this video we will be learning the art of photographing reflective surfaces in a way that is budget friendly. We will be shooting a metallic spoon here, and as you will see, the challenge will lie in cutting the down the family of angles to an extent where the the only thing that reflects back is the modifier, thereby eliminating other reflections on the surface of the spoon. Here is the video:
This video is from our Product Photography Course, which has 28 videos and 4 hours of content. Use the link below to access the full course on Udemy:
Video Summary
The video provides a practical, budget-friendly guide for photographing highly reflective and curved objects, such as metal spoons, which are notoriously difficult due to their “fish-eye” like reflective properties.
Summary of Key Techniques
- The Challenge of Curved Surfaces: Highly reflective, rounded objects capture reflections from nearly 360 degrees [00:45]. This often results in “bad specular highlights” and distorted environmental reflections, even when using standard diffusion setups [01:10].
- The “Proximity” Solution: The primary solution is to bring the diffusion panel extremely close to the subject—literally right above it [02:00]. This ensures the entire “family of angles” reflected by the object is filled solely by the uniform surface of the diffuser, leaving no room for unwanted room reflections [02:11].
- Top-Down Setup: The instructor recommends a vertical setup where the camera shoots top-down [03:29]. The light source is placed at the top, pointing through a diffusion panel mounted just inches above the subject on a black plexiglass surface for a dramatic look [03:41].
- Double Diffusion for Texture: Single diffusion cloths can sometimes show a visible fabric texture on glossy surfaces like plexiglass [04:45]. To fix this, the video suggests “double diffusion”—stacking two panels or adding a smooth translucent sheet—to create a perfectly smooth, texture-free reflection [06:07].
- Post-Processing Fallback: If a second diffusion panel is unavailable, these texture issues can also be easily corrected during post-processing in Photoshop [06:23].
