Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I know this is partly a sales question… but due to the technical nature of light I thought this might be a good question for someone in tech support or even Paul due to their expertise in light spread, hardness, and softness.

I am a corporate photographer and photograph a lot of product and food shots with 4 AlienBees B1600 flash units. We are very pleased with the consistency of your lights. In fact we may be upgrading to the new Einstein lights soon!

We now have a new customer that would like photography for their rugs. The largest rug that I will be photographing will be 196 x 96 inches. I will be taking photos of several different rugs at different angles. The main setup will have the rugs hanging up in a warehouse so I can get a full length shot for their website. Do you recommend any light modifiers that will evenly spread the light? Do you also recommend a certain lighting set up to be able to show the texture of the rugs?

Another angle will be the rug laying flat on the floor so the rugs can be photoshopped in a room scene. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for your help.

The most important issue with things like rugs would be the angle at which the light strikes the rug. You're probably going to want to light from fairly steep angles, as this will bring out the texture and pattern of the fabric.

Were it me, I would probably use 7" or 8 1/2" reflectors with a layer of diffusion material clipped to the front to smooth the coverage and widen the angle. Semi hard light is usually more effective on objects like this. Softboxes can result in excessively low contrast and flat looking results.

You may very well know about this, but if not, it may be useful to you for showing the texture of the rugs. Nik Software's Color Efex Pro 3.0 has a "filter" called Tonal Contrast that will/should really bring out the details. Good luck.

Thanks so much. I appreciate your help.