Shadowless Photograph

Have a lot of time today, I tried to shoot my pocket camera Nikon Coolpix L14. One year old camera which has been accompanying me when travel to a lot of places. I bought this camera last year (February 16th, 2008). It always hangs on my belt every time I go, even when I go to the office.

To shoot my camera I’ve no mini studio yet. I just want to explore my external flash, Canon Speedlite 430EX. So I prepare the environment before shooting. I just used a sheet of white paper. It was laid on the a pile of books closed to the wall. Some part of that paper reclined to the wall. Placing my Coolpix in certain angle and shoot it with my EOS 1000D with Speedlite 400EX II too. I used Lambency flash diffuser as well. I arranged the Coolpix in such position so that only white floor & background seen. Using the external flash with diffuser, I can get the minimum shadow below/beside/behind the object. Maybe my next experiment will using the other light source on both sides of the object. It will minimize the shadow much more. I don’t know why the result of background is not white enough, a little bit grey I think. Some possibilities there : the paper is not 100% white, my diffuser spread the light with some color effect, I used incorrect white balance, the room light gives those color effect, or maybe my picture style was not correct.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the result. It makes me know better about the importance of lighting in photography. I can get a shadowless photograph with correct lighting. No matter what kind of light sources we used, the angle of the incoming light should be in perfect ways to achieve best result. How about my picture on that picture? Ah it’s just a simple touch using GIMP (Photoshop-like software in Linux). I crop the LCD part of the Coolpix picture and put my picture as a layer behind the main layer. The idea of this composition taken from Ken Rockwell’s website. Of course my picture is not comparable than his pictures :-p

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