Shiny surfaces

Shiny surfaces present the particular problem of reflection; in this exercise we look at the impact of using tracing paper to mitigate reflection.

I chose one of my wife's jewellery boxes - this has a clear almost mirror centre with textured outside. I found some black felt as a background and set up the tripod vertically above the box.

I took three images in the daylight - firstly in the natural light coming form the right, then adding light from a microlite LED, first with no diffuser, then with:

f11, 1/6 ISO 200 natural light

f11, 1/8 ISO 200 added light from below

f11, 1/8 ISO 200 added light with diffuser from below

While the additional lighting helps to even out the texture, it does nothing to sort the core problem of extraneous reflection of the ceiling light and the camera itself.

As the exercise directs, I then made a cone out of greaseproof paper wide end around the box and narrow end around the lens. It was impossible to attach the paper to the lens because of the need to alter the focal length - the zoom lens moves when in a vertical plane.

Three more shots were taken in the same order as before:

f11, 1/6 ISO 200 natural light

f11, 1/8 ISO 200 added light from below

f11, 1/8 ISO 200 added light with diffuser from below

The camera settings were identical to the previous set of three images. Evidently the paper removes the reflection from the ceiling and the light but there is nothing that can be done about the camera itself.

The only way to remove camera reflection from this subject is to change angle. Two further shots were taken with out additional lighting: the first with no paper surround; the second using the paper tube:

f22, 1.5sec, ISO 200 without paper

f22, 1.5 sec ISO 200 with paper

In order to maximize depth of field, the camera was set to f22. Auto focus failed so manual focus was used.

In the first image, the reflection problem has simply changed rather then being eliminated - now we have a ceiling light rather than the camera. It would of course be possible to find an area of ceiling that throws no refection but the box lid has a fish eye effect, hence requiring a substantial room to avoid any reflection.

The second image achieves the best effect - the ceiling reflection cut off by the paper, and the background flatter. The only problem here is that the centre of the box now looks rather drab.

This exercise helped me understand the possibilities of removing reflections from images but that this methodology is imperfect, certainly for very shiny subjects such as this.