Thread: Light Box that most people have

Simpleman: It looks to me like your main problem is what the blade is reflecting. Your lighting for the scales is great - that is because you are getting nice diffuse reflected light off the inner surfaces of your enclosures. This is especially true for your microwave shot - if you look at just the scales, they are perfect.

What I have found from both looking at lots of photos of razors and taking lots of photos of razors is that you get the best photo of the actual blade if you are reflecting a well lit, white surface. Taking photos with the razor open as you have it (scales parallel to the "ground" and blade partially open) makes this difficult. If you hold a razor that way and move around in front of it, you will see the stuff you are reflecting is whatever is right in front of and below the razor (if you are standing and hold the razor at face level, you'll be reflecting your face, chest, and maybe some of the top of your legs in the very concave section below the spine). This means that, if you are photographing a full hollow razor with the scales parallel to the floor, you would need a white surface everywhere from the camera lens downwards.

To try to do this, I used to place a paper towel under the razor and hold the other end of it up to the bottom of my lens (with the razor also in a lightbox and good lighting). Yes, it worked ok, but it was annoying because I had to shoot with one hand (tripod makes that easier, but I don't like tripods because I like to be able to move around) and I had to move a lot of stuff when switching from one razor to another.

My solution was to simply shoot with the razor perpendicular to the ground. That way, instead of reflecting objects in front of and below the razor, I'm reflecting objects to the side of the razor. Much easier, because if the razor is near white wall, you're done. You may be able to do this in your microwave. I find a microwave is too small (and mine needs cleaning....) so I used a night table. Check out my thread here: http://straightrazorpalace.com/gener...ate-style.html

You may have to play around a bit with full hollows, but I have found two general solutions.

1) Razor on the left side - move the razor back into the "box" more, and put it very close to the "wall." Turn the razor a bit towards the wall (blade back, scales forward) and you can get a great reflection of the wall. The downside is that your photo isn't straight on at the razor, so you may not get the best view of the blade.

2) Razor on the right side - just taking the razor to the opposite wall makes things much easier, because of how the curve of the full hollow reflects objects. This works extremely well and lets you take straight on photos, but the downside is you may have to move your light (as well as your camera and whatever you lean the razor against), so it can be annoying if you are taking lots of photos or don't have much time.