Softening the Light

For this exercise I set my pair of headphones on a box, and used a roll of white paper as a backdrop. I then set an adjustable work lamp at about 45 degrees up and left of the headphones as I wanted strong side lighting to create a shadow. I then set my camera on a tripod, with the white balance set to incandescent.

 

48mm, f/18, 6s, ISO 100

This first image is the result of the above setup. There is a very dark and sharply defined shadow. The highlights are also quite hard, giving a very 'shiny' look to some of the dark plastic and the leather of the ear cushions. Even though I adjusted the white balance for this setup, I noticed a yellow cast surrounding the shadow in this image. I used the tools in lightroom to remove yellow from the image which reduced the problem somewhat, but you can still just about see it here.

 

 48mm, f/18, 8s, ISO 100

For the second image I placed a homemade diffuser in front of the lamp. I made the diffuser as per the instructions in the course material, with cardboard and tracing paper. There is an obvious difference here, in both the shadows and the highlights. The shadows are softer, more grey than black, and the highlights are also not as sharply defined, and are duller. The yellow cast has also gone, which is a great improvement to the image.

Conclusion

After consideration, I think the use of a diffuser has greatly helped the image. It has reduced the distracting shadow, which I think was drawing the viewers eye from the subject. This is obviously undesirable in the case of product photography such as this. Having the reduced shadow is nice as it contrasts with the white background, and gives a sense of depth to the image, giving the impression of a solid object that the viewer could hold. I think I actually prefer the harder highlights from the first image though.