Photographing a reflective sign

[22]

I'm an occasional visitor to this corner of PH; following Mrs Ted's adventures, wildlife pics, photo comps and some very talented people (I'm not one of those).

I had a sign made last year, printed on clear acrylic, to 'celebrate' the company becoming employee owned (in 2019 - took me a while!) with the things a few customers said.

By chance I video-called someone this week who had the sign in the background and it looked great, I'll probably re-position myself similarly when I'm in the office and have video meetings and the such. But it made me think back to my failed attempt at capturing a nice photo of it when it was installed. It's an old building with a low, pitched roof starting just above the sign with skylights and LED strip lights.

I'm curiously really - it's nothing important. I tried different angles, lights on and off. Someone said if you take a photo of a mirror you can take it outside and have it on the ground with the sky as the reflection. The sign is 1.8x1.2m and fitted to the wall. It would come off I'm sure, but it's not important enough for that.



Any tips on how I 'should' be taking a photo. On a phone, with zero budget and little patience

[Rough101]

Turn the lights off and use a ‘tripod’ or whatever to support the phone with. A longer exposure.

Or take it off the wall and photo somewhere else.

[dxg]

Polarising filter to get rid of the reflections.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ZOMEI-Professional-Circul...

[C n C]

If you're trying to lose the distracting reflections from the skylights, and you want to do it for no/minimal cost - then you could try with a large sheet of paper (something like a sheet from a flip chart).

Hold the phone as close to the sign as possible to get the sign to fill the frame, then get someone to hold up the paper just infront of your phone in a landscape orientation. Make a small hole in the middle of the paper, just a tiny bit bigger than the lens on your phone, and take the photo. This technique can also be used instead with a black paper/cloth, and is a good way to get rid of reflections off glass when (for example) trying to take photos of fish in an aquarium.


Alternatively, you could wait until it's dark, so no light from the skylights, then try positioning a desk lamp on either side of the sign at about a 30-45 degree angle to the wall, but far enough away so they are out of the picture. This should light the sign, but you shouldn't get reflections of the desk lamps. This type of arrangement is often used when taking photos of a document/print/other flat object.

[ridds]

"Night-mode" on a Samsung phone.

Not sure if iPhone have a similar mode.

It'll come out perfect.

[tog]

A long lens will give you a smaller area in the reflection, and a wide aperture will render any reflection out of focus. Place something black (anything from Colorama to a jumper) to fill the reflection and it shouldn't appear. Avoid shining direct light on your sign or you will get shadows of the text onto the background.

ETA Just saw the bit about only using a phone so don't worry about the wide aperture part. But if you stand back a bit and zoom in it should still work, at the cost of some reduced quality. Zooming in reduces the angle of view in the reflection and the key thing is managing what is reflected - something dark with little light on it filling the reflection should just disappear.

Edited by tog on Thursday 25th April 23:43

[22]

Thanks all. I think, in hindsight, my efforts were 'there and then' when the sign went up. Some improved attempts with some of the tips here and different times of day. Appreciated.