Setting Up A Still Table
Winter is upon us. At least, it's upon those of us in the northern hemisphere, and the days have gotten shorter. If you do photography for a hobby then you may find that it's dark all the time when you have time to shoot. I found myself in this situation, so I decided to set up a table for still-life photography. Here's how I did it.
First you need a table.
I went pawing around in the shed and found this ancient WorkMate. It's a bit beat up, and it was dirty as all get-out, but it was hanging around so I used it. It has the benefit of being adjustable in height - the bottom legs can be folded in, so if I'm going to do a lot of macro work then I can lower the height so as to make it easier to look in the viewfinder when shooting directly downwards onto an object on the table.
In my case, the table didn't really have a flat top, so I found a piece of press-board with melamine laminated onto it. Basically it's a slice out of a counter-top. I set it on top of the Workmate to give me a larger, flat surface. So far, no cash outlay.
Let There Be Light
A quick trip to Wal-Mart gained me a pair of swing-arm light fixtures and some light bulbs. I spent maybe $25 in canuck bucks on both lights and the bulbs.
You Need To Do A Background Check
Get yourself to a fabric store and pick up fabric for a background. If you want backgrounds that 'disappear' in the photo then use felt or velvet. The props on the table are my old art mannequin in a granite mortar and pestle.
Set
your exposure on a gray card on the table, and start taking shots. Here is
the first shot I took on the table using the two swing-arm lights as the only
lighting. If you shoot film then you'll need to get pretty swanky bulbs to
make sure they are 3200K or nearly so. I can pre-set white balance on my
DSLR so I can get pure daylight-looking shots with these lights. This
first shot I didn't bother with the pre-set, so it's pretty warm looking.
If you want to dim one light for off-balance lighting you can either move it
farther away, or if you want more of an effect then you can just replace the
bulb with a lower wattage one.