I have been taking photos of framed art with a digital camera to place in a catalog. The problem is I am getting a reflection in the glass of the framed item. What ever is behind me is showing in the glass. Is there anything I can do to avoid this? Can I do something different with the lighting? Can I put a sheet around the camera to block me out and anything else in the background? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance. Todd

-- Todd B. (todbrez@aol.com), June 05, 2000

Answers

I take photos of stuff behind glass fairly often, here is my set up. I put a light with diffusion umbrellas on both sides at 45 degree angles from the object. I wrap myself and my tripod in black material and leave the rest of the room dark. this works good for me.

doug

-- doug (dmcgoldrick@usa.net), June 05, 2000.

Todd, I have experienced the same thing and it was rather annoying! I ended up covering every bit of bright or shiny spot with tape, mat black board or black cloth to minimize the reflexions. Using a longer lens helps too. My camera and tripod are black, but I had to hide myself before firing! Having the right spotlights and reducing the ambient light as much as you can will help. I have not tested, but I guess that shooting through a dark screen would solve the problem too!

-- Paul Schilliger (pschilliger@smile.ch), June 05, 2000.

Polarize the light source and use a polarizing filter on the camera and this should take care of your problem. Even with that, a dim background behind you to cut the brighter reflecting sources will help.

-- Dan Smith (shooter@brigham.netq), June 05, 2000.

If this really was a large format question, the easy answer would be to offset the camera from the object and use the cross-front camera movement to centre the subject again, making sure that the area directly in front of the glass was dark or masked off with a black board. Otherwise, it's down to shooting through a small gap in some black curtains or similar, or the crossed polariser suggestion.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), June 08, 2000.

why must the picture be taken with glass? are you making these pictures? assemble them without glass and shoot them. then assemble with glass afterwards. this is what we do, and we never get glare or reflections. this is the only surefire way to get a good picture of a frame or framed picture.

-- mark donnay (mark@picturesxl.com), June 18, 2002.