Table Topple

I like table tops. You can take pictures on them, you can eat your dinner off them, and you can sleep on them after 18 bottles of beer. Actually, these days I can get there in 6, which means I can afford a pillow for the tabletop...I generally use a pile of old chip wrappings.

As photographic supports, however, they can leave something to be desired - mainly a backdrop behind your main subject. If you are doing pack shots or product photography you frequently need a bland or invisible backdrop so as not to encroach upon your subject. Herewith several suggestions:

1. Get a large sheet of cardboard from the newsagent or Jackson's art supply* and tape it to the front of the tabletop. Let it run back as far as you need for the subject to sit and then curve it up. Support it with a pile of books. Light the subject with $ 2000 worth of studio monolights or $ 1000 worth of speed lights and the pictures will look good. Light it with the sun and the pictures will also look good but you will have to contend with flies and wind.

2. Put your subjects inside a Glanz or Promaster light cube and light as before. The tent will shelter the subject but will itself catch the wind. Be cautious outside but don't be discouraged - many people light jewellery successfully with a light tent and a reflector and the Western Australian sunshine.

3. Promaster product table. Now you're talking. Attachment points for lighting supports and a translucent curved base - you can fire a flash up from below to eliminate shadows. Not expensive and folds out of the way. Our preferred product platform. in store now. No, you can't have the one on the floor because WE need it...we have more upstairs.

* Same cardboard but you can get Lotto tickets from the newsagent. And a smile.

Hands Across The Table - Cullmann Studio Set

I wish I had an underwater studio. Then I could employ an octopus as an assistant and whenever I was trying to photograph a complex setup on the tabletop there would be extra arms available to hold things.

As it is, what might look like a simple bunch of toy cars and their associated scenery might be propped up with toothpicks, Blu-tac, double-sided sticky tape, folded matchbooks, piles of rice...the variations are endless as I try to show he object but hide the support. Photoshop is helpful to erase shadows but the more you can do at the time the less fiddling you do later.

Enter the Cullmann Flexx Studio set. A whole kit wrapped in a nylon carry bag that attaches to table edges, or smooth flat surfaces, or cranes over from a light sand. there are clamps, grips, and a ball head with a cold shoe for a speed light. There are extension poles and goosenecks. It should allow me to get a steady shot while holding a lot of the heavier little components at awkward angles.

Guess what I am going to push for as a Christmas present...

PS: You can get smaller sets as well, but this is the big daddy and I deserve the best...

Ooh - Look At All The Coloured Lights!

1960's and 1970's - heyday of the coloured gel in the studio. With the new flash systems you could put a piece of extremely expensive cellophane in front of the and fire them off and get funky effects. We knew they were funky because we saw them in advertisements in German magazines. A lot of us weren't exactly sure what funky meant, but...

Reel forward ( Reel? I will explain reels to you later children, once the arthritis medicine kicks in.) to now and the necessity of applying delicate touches of colour to studio work. See the heading illustration. All major flash makers produce some form of gel holder for their light shapers - generally it will clip onto the front of a standard reflector:

You can enclose the gel in a cardboard frame or you can slip it in there palin. What you cannot do is slip in a piece of cheap newsagency cellophane over a modelling light (I'll explain cellophane children, as soon as the gout medicine ramps up.) as it will melt, catch fire, or start twerking. You have to use real gels designed to withstand heat.

Enter the Rosco Gels. Here are a variety of them in convenient packets. You can get colour correction, violent tints, diffusion sheets, or theatre colours. Better still, I see the Rosco people can also supply the stuff in rolls - 48 inches wide and 100 square feet on he roll. This means you could gel a soft box as easily as you could do it on a standard reflector. The big rolls are a special order through us but the small packets are in-store now.

One thing to remember with gels. Too much is rarely enough.