I don't think so, Mark. Scanners don't have that much DOF and some of the settin gs are largely beyond the capability of any A3 scanner. But for the glass, yes I suppose there is one, although place d on top of the flowers and not below. But I am thinking of the glass as the illuminant. Have to find the time to test and see if it can be.
Paul, I took a look at the pictures on the website and now I have an understanding of what you were talking about. Fred actually began to answer this one before he got sidetracked with history.
This is in fact a variation of a standard setup for jewlery. The flowers are mounted on a non-glare sheet of glass, so the flowers don't reflect. The background is a few feet behind and is probably black velvet mounted on a board. Mounting the flowers on the glass allows one to achieve this very shallow angle of light since the glass allows one to light through the surface the flowers rest on. Exactly how he lit it--whether it was a hose or a tent of some sort-- doesn't really matter. Any of those methods will work.
Yes Ted, the glass plates were probably used, but concerning the lighting, it is much more peculiar than anyone here thinks and I don't believe any of those methods will work to that ef fect. Watching the small vignettes on the web page marked above doesn't show how delicate the lighting wa s. Only the book or larger prints show it, especially when watching larger settings of flowers. For instanc e, an area of 1 1/2 feet across shows a light falloff of about two to three stops each centimeter in depth! And it is otherwise uniformly lit. No conventional mean of lighting can achieve that. A well kept secret, it seems!
Hello All,
I've been done much experimentation with lighting techniques for the past few years and I can say with high certainty that I know Feinstein's technique. The secret is out, he's not much of a photographer but more of a "scanner." Feinstein isn't the first to use the scanner either, there are many others, some famous for scanning moths (Joseph Scheer). I have some "photos" that are similar to Harold's. If you're skeptical, I'll send you some of my pics so you can see for yourself.
When I showed the book to my wife, she said "photoshop".
If you are a regular reader of Popular Photography like me :-), in this month's (Dec 2005) issue, you will see an article about Feinstein's 100 Sea Shells project, done in the same style as his 100 Flowers. An Epson scanner was used. And wife was still right (one hour of photoshop per image).
Favorite quote: "If people knew how easy it was, I could be arrested".
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks