Reflection In Glasses

[ilovelucydog]

My 19yr old is now wearing glasses and every picture has reflections in the glasses. Is it the positioning with light, or something else? How do you get a sharp focus on the eyes?

[rpcrowe]

Are you shooting with an on-camera flash? If so, try bouncing the flash and not using a reflector/diffuser (which directs some of the bounce light directly forward). Also try tilting the glasses just a but so that the top of the lenses are a bit closer to the camera than the bottoms. This will often reduce (not prevent but reduce) the reflections.

With studio lighting, it is a bit easier since the light is not emanating from along the axis of the lens. using your modeling lights, WYSIWYG portraiture will show you the reflections and allow you to move the lights to reduce those reflections.

When I shot portraits as a U.S. Navy Photographer, we had an advantage in that almost all our subjects wore the same (albeit ugly) Navy issue plastic framed glasses. We always kept a collection of these frames (in different sizes) without lenses. That ALWAYS prevented reflections.

[ilovelucydog]

These are all with natural light. Some of them have a bright spot. Some have an object or person.

When you say tilt the glasses just a bit... tilt them? I'm not understanding that sentence.

He only has the one pair and I don't think he wants me taking the lenses out.

[jiro]

You could always buy those fancy reading glasses that would suit your kid's face at Walmart and take off the lenses, Mary. Even the professional photographers cheat the same way as Richard described it.

[ilovelucydog]

You could always buy those fancy reading glasses that would suit your kid's face at Walmart and take off the lenses, Mary. Even the professional photographers cheat the same way as Richard described it.

Max would say... no... he's not cooperative like that. Unless it were somebody else taking the pic like... you.

[jiro]

Max would say... no... he's not cooperative like that. Unless it were somebody else taking the pic like... you.

Oooo... picky, picky guy. There's a cheaper way to do the shot - go to your optical shop and let him try out the frames then take the shot there using a wide aperture to blur out the background. Nothing to buy and the ambience is great! LOL!

[ilovelucydog]

Oooo... picky, picky guy. There's a cheaper way to do the shot - go to your optical shop and let him try out the frames then take the shot there using a wide aperture to blur out the background. Nothing to buy and the ambience is great! LOL!

Umm... he aint gonna go for that either. I'll have to pay attention to the lighting and reflection before taking the picture. So many details.

[jiro]

Umm... he aint gonna go for that either. I'll have to pay attention to the lighting and reflection before taking the picture. So many details.

No offense, Mary but the best way for you to learn about these things is to simply take the shots and learn from your mistakes. It's really much easy learning from your mistakes than simply crunching all those ideas and the "what ifs" on your mind.

[ilovelucydog]

No offense, Mary but the best way for you to learn about these things is to simply take the shots and learn from your mistakes. It's really much easy learning from your mistakes than simply crunching all those ideas and the "what ifs" on your mind.

That's why I was asking what to look for.

[PopsPhotos]

We used to smear the lenses (the ones in the glasses frames) with dish soap liquid. Not enough to leave suds and such, just a film over the glass. This cuts down the reflection a lot and is finished off with having clean glasses.

Note, smear only the OUTSIDE of the glasses for the photo session.

Pops

[Colin Southern]

Hi Mary,

Basically you have to get the light source outside of what we call the "family of angles". Light will bounce of glass like a ball bounces off the cushion on a pool table (angle of incidence = angle of reflection), so you need to get the light source around to the side, eg



There are also other tricks ...

- Take 2 shots - one with glasses, one without - "cut and paste" in Photoshop.

- Take the lenses out

Hope this helps!

[ilovelucydog]

Hi Mary,

Basically you have to get the light source outside of what we call the "family of angles". Light will bounce of glass like a ball bounces off the cushion on a pool table (angle of incidence = angle of reflection), so you need to get the light source around to the side, eg



There are also other tricks ...

- Take 2 shots - one with glasses, one without - "cut and paste" in Photoshop.

- Take the lenses out

Hope this helps!

Thank you, Colin. That makes sense.