Eliminating reflections in glass can be a challenge. Canon EOS 7D 50mm at f/4 1/60 ISO 200
My wife makes stained glass stepping stones and she was looking for a way to market them online so I set out to photograph them. While I wouldn't call product shots high art photography they did provide and interesting challenge. It was a typical dark Nanaimo afternoon and I knew I wanted a bright well lit image to show off the deep rich colours of the glass. I started with a a flash mounted on the camera because I was feeling lazy and hoping that ETTL would give me a nice image. That didn't work, I got huge reflections. I was standing directly over the stones looking down at them so I kept the flash on the camera but bounced the light off of white shoot through umbrella that I placed on the other side of the stone. The umbrella was angled down towards the stone and while this did provide a larger more diffuse light source it did not completely eliminate my reflection issues. Finally I twigged to the idea that the light was bouncing straight back into the lens and that I needed to give it a path that still hit the stone but would not bounce back straight to the lens. I set up an umbrella with a flash in it on either side of the stone so that the main light would hit the glass and bounce off to the side leaving a reflectionless image. It worked. If you want to see more of the images check hit the Stained Glass link at the top of the page
-Russell Berg