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Showing posts with label Lightbulb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lightbulb. Show all posts
3 Nov 2013
Upside-Down World In A LightBulb

  • at 11:37 pm
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I had a late night wedding event yesterday and was feeling a little bit lethargic to go out for photography despite good weather today. So I was thinking is there any photography ideas that I can take on at home without the need to setup any studio strobes, background, etc.

Just when I was thinking desperately, an idea struck me while watching the movie "Upside Down" with the lightbulb in front of the TV (note: I've left the lightbulb in front of the TV after my post yesterday on "Photographing Lightbulb with Reflections"). I thought why not an upside-down world in a lightbulb?

I recalled that when I was a kid, my dad used to remove the filament of lightbulbs and reared little guppy fishes to make me happy. Back then (and now as well), I was always amazed with how everything was looking upside-down from a water-filled lightbulb before he put in the fishes.

Hollowing the Lightbulb

So I took on the daunting task to stripe off the filament inside a lightbulb. I am not very good with such handy fix work, and so I googled "How to hollow out a lightbulb" … which gives me plenty of results to study how the filament can be removed. After going through a couple of videos, I buck up my courage and spent almost an hour to finally hollow out the lightbulb.
(Note: I'm not posting the instructions on how to hollow out a lightbulb as there are many videos out there in the Internet. Do take extreme care and not to cut yourself when doing it.)

With the lightbulb hollowed and cleaned-up, I filled it with water. Then, I tie a thread to the metallic base cape of the water-filled lightbulb and hang it on the windows in my living room. The prop required is completed :)

Experimenting with Different Angles

From the water-filled lightbulb, I was able to see how the multi-storey carpark and flats in front of my living room were looking upside-down in the lightbulb. I took a couple of shots and experimented with different angles.

I noticed that I had to photograph from a position slightly lower than the hanging lightbulb in order for the buildings and sky to appear dramatically in the lightbulb. However, this could be due to the reason that I'm staying at mid-floor level.

After taken the shots that I wanted at my house, I hurried to my parents' house which is on high-floor to try out. This time round, I noticed that I could photograph the lightbulb at angle almost perpendicular with the lightbulb. I was also able to get more of the sky appearing in the lightbulb as well.

To add a little more drama to the landscape inside the lightbulb, I did a HDR with +/- 2 stops bracket shots. Also note that I have actually flipped the lightbulb to show the landscape inside in a upright position, which means anything you see outside the lightbulb is actually upside-down.

In both cases, I noticed that the extreme round top as well as the curvy "waist" of the lightbulb is actually reflecting more of the interior environment of the house. Perhaps next time, I should bring the lightbulb to an open-space environment and try out if it is the same.

Other Things to Note

  • When filling water into the lightbulb, air bubbles will then to get trap inside. What I did was to gentle clean up the bubbles with a cotton bud.
  • Finger prints and fine dust will tend to appear on the lightbulb's glass surface. You need to take care of them before photographing otherwise they will just turn up in the photo. While it may be totally impossible to clean up all the fine dust, at least clean away the finger prints :)
  • Take extreme precaution when hanging lightbulbs on windows. Make sure that it is tightly secured. Otherwise if it drops off the window, you might fatally injured any passerby. (Note: In Singapore, even if the falling lightbulb did not hit anyone, you can still be charged for high-floor littering.)

Please visit http://jefzlim.smugmug.com/Studio-Works/Still-Life/ for more photos ...


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2 Nov 2013
Photographing Lightbulb With Reflections

Today let's look at how to photograph a lighted lightbulb that is laying down with it's reflection on the glass surface. 

Some time ago, I had actually tried photographing it but was unable to achieve the right results that I desired. Somehow recently, I stumbled across a YouTube video by +Gavin Hoey from adoramaTV and tried out his method.

The picture above is the end result of my work on the lightbulb following pretty closely to what Gavin Hoey has shown in his YouTube video.  I was very satisfied with the results produced by following Gavin Hoey's video, as compared to my earlier attempt by just laying down the lighted lightbulb on a black glass surface (see below). Let's look at the key differences ...
1. It is more difficult to achieve an interesting perspective with the lightbulb laying down on the black glass surface as it is almost impossible to have the base insulator cap touching the glass surface due to the lightbulb holder.

2. I find that it is harder to achieve the glow around the lightbulb even having used the same technique of wrapping a white cardboard around the circumferences of the lightbulb.

3. There appears to be more noise from the light in the reflection which will make it harder to clean away using photoshop.

4. There are double reflection which is caused by the glass surface from the table top as well as the lightbulb.

5. As seen from the image, the reflection of the lightbulb is not clearly defined enough. Although this is real but it does not provide a picture that is surreal enough from photography perspective.


For those who are interesting to try out, I suggest referring to Gavin Hoey's video before doing so. Sometimes the best way to improve and learn is to learn from others :)

I'll just briefly provide a key summary on what is done as watching his video will give you a clearer idea:

Taking the Pictures

  • A clear lightbulb with the lighting power controllable through a dimmer is required.
  • A picture is taken with the lighted lightbulb standing vertically on a holder. 
    • The lightbulb is dimmed down to a fairly low level that is sufficiently bright enough to illuminate surface of the lightbulb and yet the lightbulb filament is not too overwhelm by the light power.
    • A piece of white cardboard is placed around the circumference of the lightbulb in a position slightly behind the lightbulb. This is to provide illuminated glow on the circumference surface of the lightbulb.
  • Another picture of the lightbulb's base insulator cap is taken using a 2nd unlighted lightbulb in a vertical position. The 1st lighted lightbulb will be left laying down to illuminate the picture taken.

Post-Processing Using Photoshop

  • The 1st picture of the lighted lightbulb: Light noise around the lightbulb filament and outside of the lightbulb are cleaned up.
  • The 2nd picture of the base insulator cap is cropped and patched onto the lighted lightbulb of the 1st picture so that a complete picture of the lighted lightbulb with the base insulator cap.
  • The completed picture is then rotated to a lying down position and a copy is duplicated.
  • The duplicated copy is then shifted to a reflection position below the laying lightbulb. Gaussian blur is applied to the reflection and partial of the reflection is erased for more realistic reflection look.


Please visit http://jefzlim.smugmug.com/Studio-Works/Still-Life to see the higher resolution of the final lightbulb picture …



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