Photographing PCB'S

[TheDirty]

It's important to note, that this is not portraiture.  For portraiture you generally want certain main light/fill light setups in order for proper shadows.  All balanced lights with no shadows is called flat lighting and the person being pictured doesn't look natural without proper shadows.  For a technical photo of a static item, flat lighting is fine.  If this was actually a product for sale and you wanted to add some drama to the product, you would light it with slight shadows and still two main soft lights may be used for this.  Like this:



...but, this all goes way beyond what this thread is about.  It is not difficult to do a more than adequately detailed PCB shot without over thinking it as Dave has shown.  Unless you're shooting for a catalog, I don't think anyone cares about perfect colour accuracy and dramatic shadows.

[alm]

Thanks alm , but no, I was clear enough ... this specific light system its called as secondary,
because it is .
And what it does are to soften the shadows , that the main flash system , will produce ..

There is no way to get any natural colors , just with this system .
Thats why the main flash unit are used as default primary source ..

Are you talking about key vs. fill light? It's quite common to use a softbox as key light, nothing wrong with that. Softboxes might slightly alter the color balance, but anyone caring that much about color accuracy is using a closed loop system like a ColorChecker anyway. By the way, fill light doesn't soften shadows, it only makes them lighter (reduces contrast). You need a larger light source as key light (eg. softbox) for that.

[EEVblog]

Two soft lights without a main light is a perfectly legitimate product shot setup.  There is no issue here with colour correction if the lights have the same colour temperature, which they should.

The sample shots are more than adequate.  You can nitpick some glare on one and slightly OOF if you pixel peep, but there's no serious lighting issues with this setup.

I agree, the shots are more than adequate from these two lights (which use 4x50W Daylight CFL bulbs each).
These were quick test shots on auto camera mode. No attempt was made to play around with settings and try to get a better result. So, no need for a main light at all.

Sorry, they are of course not soft boxes, but "soft lights" so to speak.
As I said, results would probably improve with having the product inside of those $30 ebay soft boxes.

Soft boxes and soft lights are much easier (and cheaper) to use than any sort of flash system.

These two huge studio soft lights ($180 for both, inc stands and bulbs), plus a soft box (say $30) costs a lot less than one external bottom of the range flash for my camera!

Dave.

[alm]

Once again, a softbox is a type of modifier that you mount on the light. It's a fabric 'reflector' (pyramid shape) with one or more diffusion panels to get an even distribution of light. You mount either a flash or a continuous light source in it, and the softbox makes the source larger (compare the surface area of the front of the softbox with the surface area of your light). So a softbox is not cheaper than a flash system, a softbox is used with a flash or continuous system. Those other things are light tents, and are good for a very even, boring illumination. A light tent is also used with either flash or continuous lights.

I'm not sure if completely illumination is optimal, I'd think you wouldn't want that much light reflecting from the top of the parts, since a direct reflection tends to obscure markings. For example, about half of the  devices on this PCB have their markings obscured by direct reflections. This picture (water optional) with the main light from camera right has all markings clearly visible. But I'm sure you'll get acceptable pictures with completely flat lighting in a light tent.

And yes, proprietary flashes with all the automation are expensive, but there are manual-only flashes available for $50 or so (search the Strobist site for recommendations), although studio flashes are a lot nicer for this kind of work (where you don't need the portability). You could probably also get a set of cheap studio flashes for $180.

Continuous lights are easier to use (although the modeling light on studio flashes helps), but don't put out much light compared to similar-sized flashes. Not a problem as long as your subject is stationary, your camera is on a decent tripod and you don't have much ambient light to mess things up.

[Kiriakos-GR]

OT..

Good to hear from you Kiriakos, i thought you are gone! i miss u

Bro, I have positive feelings for you too..  as I have for few more,
my crime was that I acted like an overprotective father,
and the misunderstanding, got born in minutes.

I have found one specialized in electronics, Greek forum, but I will keep contact with this too.