More Mock Studio: Apple with Flash and Glass

I decided to do more practice with the two off-camera flash units. This time I was using a single apple with a sheet of glass (glass from a simple picture frame) to play around with reflection and flash placement.

The equipment:

Two Yongnuo YN460-II set in S1 mode at 1-3 bars of power. They were mounted on Flashpoint stands.
Camera was a K-5 and DA* 55mm f1.4 lens.
A glass picture frame as well as a plastic container.

First off I just tried photographing the apple on the picture frame. The frame came with a matte black background:

Apple

I had to clean up the black area on the left a bit by “burning” the blackness to make it less reflective and showing imperfections. I had first started off by using the healing brush, but it wasn’t enough.

Apple

Next up I decided to get some spacing between the glass and table by using a plastic container. I also put one of the flashes under the glass to provide some floor lighting:

Apple on glass.

Apple reflected

I noticed a few things I need to work on:

I need to work on more diffusion of the flash light. Even at minimum power and with a basic diffuser at a low ambient light level, the apple experienced blown highlights often.
Unlike my last studio practice, I was using a larger aperture most of the time. It was too large, so the apple was not fully in focus.

First look at the Sigma 18-50mm F/2.8 for Sony E-mount bought from KEH

I've use a Sony Alpha A6000 and the PZ 16–50mm F/3.5–5.6 OSS kit lens with my computer as a webcam for a long time now. It's a lower cost option that has been very consistent outputting 1080p at 30 FPS to a USB based HDMI capture device. The kit lens is generally fine, but it has a few quirks. The biggest issue is that throughout the zoom range the maximum aperture value is not fixed. This introduces technical challenges when I want to show detailed views of product or similar use cases. There are also other considerations I'll talk about later in this article. So I decided to buy the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN | C lens in E-mount as a replacement. Links in this article are a mix of paid and through my affiliates. I earn from each in different ways. One is a flat fee and the others I earn from qualifying purchases. Considering them for your purchasing needs helps make the creation of this information viable! I made a video unboxing the lens and trying it out with Open Br

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