Creative Light Pad Photography Experiments

Have you tried Light pad Photography? It’s an effective way of producing high key images with a bright white background and bringing out lots of detail and translucency. There is so much opportunity for experimentation with colour and composition.

Using a Light Pad

A light pad is a flat board which lights up with a soft even light across it. Usually, it is used flat, and items are placed on it however it can be placed upright and used behind items as well. My light pad is quite simple and cheap, it cost about £40 from eBay. It is a slim A3 sized board which lights up with the flat even light you need. This provides a bright background for your subject. It plugs intp the mains with a USB cable.

In order to protect the light pad, I place a clear sheet of plastic on top. This allows the light through and prevents the subject from scratching the surface of the pad. Remember any scratches will show on all your pictures so its worth making an effort to keep the surface pristine.

Subject selection and arrangement

The best subjects for a light pad have lots of detail and some translucency to allow light through. These include many flowers both fresh and dried and any small glass items and thinly sliced fruit and veg.

Now is the time to have a bit of fun, arrange the subjects in an attractive manner. Its a good idea to do this before you switch the light on as the bright light can dry some subjects out. A fern leaf display I was arranging dried out and shrivelled up before I could take the pics. So I keep my flowers in a jar of water and cut fruit and veg wrapped in cling film until I’m completely ready to use them.

You can, of course, add a few sprays of water to keep the subject fresh and add a bit of sparkle to your pics.

Creative Lightpad Photography

Shoot in Raw if possible

Shooting in raw rather than JPG will give you a better chance of getting your background pure white in your digital darkroom. Sometimes the photos come out with a shadow which you need to whiten in photoshop or similar. Using a Raw file gives you more flexibility with the editing.

Natural light and a reflector

I place the light pad close to a window ( or on a windowsill) to allow natural light to fall onto it. Choose a time when the light is flat and even and there are no harsh light and shadows across it. Best not to do this in bright sunlight or with a partial shadow falling across the light pad.

When the light is too bright through the window I place the light pad on a near-by table and light the subject softly from directly above.

Another tip is to place a reflector opposite the window. This can be a piece of white foam core board or maybe a piece of card covered in tin foil depending on the amount of light you need. You then angle it to lighten any shady areas.

Exposure

The next step is to set up your camera and switch it to manual shooting mode. To get a nice sharp and clear picture at close range in a studio you need a small aperture and a low ISO. The exact settings will depend on the light and your camera / lenses. I like between F11 and F18 and ISO 64 adjusting the exposure time to get a correct exposure. The distance you need to be from your subject will depend on your focal length. You could try these for starters and then adapt them to suit.

Next set the shutter speed which will probably be slow, as slow as 30 seconds to a minute or more to get a quite bright exposure. Obviously, this means using a tripod to prevent camera shake. I also set my camera to delay shutter release for a couple of seconds which helps keep things nice and sharp. I normally allow for a slight overexposure to avoid any greying in the background.

Using Studio Lights

Recently I have purchased some very cheap lights which I can angle over the top of the subjects to add a bit of top light when necessary. This has helped remove some of the grey cast to the background that I have seen in some of my natural light experiments.

Advanced Light Pad Photography Options

Hopefully, you will have some great photos just from the above. Whilst a little shadow can actually enhance the photos sometimes you will want a pure white background most of the time. As you can see in this glass below some subjects actually reflect in the light pad so you get a very interesting photograph.

It’s worth trying lots of different subjects to see what effects you get. This shell seems to have a light coming from deep inside it.

There are a couple of digital darkroom techniques you can try to enhance them is the background is not quite white enough.

Lighten the background

If there is just a small area of shadow, then you can use a soft white brush to dust away small grey shadows. This is my preferred option and the one I usually use.

I have more articles about Light pad Phtography if you are interested:

Creating the Dahlia image

Lighting for Lightpad photography

Over to You

I’m always looking for new subjects for my light pad photography. Do you have any ideas I’ve not thought of? It would be great to hear from you. Also, I would love to see your attempts. Please do drop a comment below and tell me all your ideas or point me to your creations.

Thanks for listening and do come back soon

Anne xx