Lighting a balloon....

[Neva]

How would you light this to shoot it? The balloon itself is a pale pink but it doesn't come out that way. I tried shooting with flash but got the white flash reflection in the center of the shot. I tried without flash and got the reflections of other lights in the room. I even tried lighting from the bottom with an LED and got a blown out light at the base. Is there anyway to really shoot the balloon and not have the reflections or is that something that may have to be fixed after the fact? Does anyone know?

Attachments:

[NCPhotoTrekker]

You are going to need an off camera flash that is diffused. Ideally, I think that a softbox would be a good idea. Otherwise, use at least one flash to the side, slightly behind the balloon (another one behind the other side would be nice). Keep them diffused either with tissue paper, or an attached softbox style diffuser. This will keep your highlights down, and will soften the light. Play with the light output until you are able to keep the faint pink of the balloon.

Since the balloon will act like a reflector to ambient objects, try isolating it with a black curtain well out of view.

[Neva]

Thanks for the info Greg. I'll be giving it a try to see what I can do! Thank you so much!!

[musicman5]

When I shoot objects like this I use a light tent and place my flashes or strobes to shoot thru the top and side of it.

Mine looks something like this:

www.adorama.com/SVLB20.html?searchinfo=light+tent

This diffuses the light so that there is very little glare. If I need to duffuse it more I add some diffusion to the flash or strobe, but I rarely need to do that.

[Neva]

Okay. Thanks Mark. I had heard someone else mention this before. I'll check it out.

[Steve (FloppyDog)]

Subjects like this are difficult to light, but like has been suggested you might have better luck hitting it from a side. Any frontal/overhead light will reflect. One thing you might try if you have two lights is lighting the backdrop.(?)

[Neva]

Thanks Steve. Hopefully, I will have some time this weekend to try different things with it and see how it goes.

[musicman5]

Somewhere I saw a photo of a setup someone used to photograph an object like yours. They used a shower curtain. The curtain was attached to light stands so that it went around the object in a "U" shape, then lit it from either side.

I finally found a photo of my light tent.

You can see here that I had 2 lights, on on either side.

[Neva]

Thanks Mark! I'm finding that its a trial and error thing for me until I get the proper equipment to work with. But, it's fun and educational!!