Studio Photography: Perfume bottle

My aim was to light a coloured bottle to see which type of lighting showed off the bottle best. I used four different types of lighting, honeycomb, soft box, beauty dish and umbrella.

The reason why i used a perfume bottle is because most bottles that are photographed are perfume bottles for adverts etc and because perfume is expensive and needs to to photographed professionally with high quality style i decided to best the different lighting using a perfume bottle and see which lighting lights the bottle best.

Honeycomb without reflector

Honeycomb with reflector.

The honeycomb light is more narrow therefore the light is a lot brighter compared to the rest of the lighting. This means that there are harsh shadows from the bottle


A beauty dish bounces the light onto a reflector which reflects in back into the dish that reflect it back out making the light more soft and has a nigger surface area. Therefore the perfume bottle lit using a beauty dish are more soft than the images of the bottle when using a honeycomb.

Beauty dish with reflector.

With the beauty dish the light bounces out on to a the small in front of it and reflects in back into the big dish which then projects the light out making the lift very soft.

Beauty dish without reflector

Without the reflector one side of the bottles top is in the dark whereas using a reflector to reflect the light back onto the bottle top so it lights the other side.

With the soft box I masked part of it (covered sections of the light) and used a different perfume bottle to get a strip of light then replaced it back with my original bottle, so that I was using masked lighting to light my object. The bottle has lots of ridged shapes so I couldn't get a continuous strip like I would with a curved perfume bottle

Soft box with reflector

The soft box defuses the lighting making it softer. So this bottle is not as well lit as the others. Also because it is masked there isn't much light shone onto the bottle. I use a reflector to light the top but the other side is still quiet dark.

Soft box without reflector

The same was done but this time i didn't use a reflector to light the top so you can see how dark it looks

With the umbrella the light is faced away from the object, the light is reflected into the umbrella with reflectors ad bounced back onto the perfume bottle.

Umbrella without reflector

The bottle is bright and doesn't really highlight the shape of the perfume bottle. The top of the perfume bottle, is dark and the contrast between the dark top and bright bottle it doesn't really light the bottle in an attractive way.

Umbrella Reflector

I used a reflector to bounce the light back onto the top to highlight it. The perfume bottle looks better than the one without the reflector just because the top has more light but it still doesn't show off the perfume bottle.

I have found out what the different types of lighting does to the bottle but i feel that the bottle i used wasn't appreciate for this practical. Therefore if i do it again i will use a glass water bottle, which is bigger than the perfume bottle and as a curves that straight edges.

Below are some examples of other shots that I tried but I didn't like the way they are lite.

This image was lite using a softbox. I used fabric to mask sections of the light out so you get a long strip along the bottle. Unfortunately there is a long shadow from the bottle so if I was to retake the image I would use another softbox the other side so the shadow isn't so harsh. Also I had to look slightly down on the bottle so the long strip is continuous.

This bottle was lite using an umbrella light, because of the shape of the bottle you can see the right reflecting in two places. Also you can see the bottle reflecting on the bottom so next time I will use a light underneath to take that reflection away

This bottle was lite using a beauty dish and had the problems similar to the perfume bottle above with the reflection on the bottom and you can see the light reflected in the bottle. Also there is a shadow on the other side so next time ill try moving the light further away or try another beauty dish on the side to make it equal either side.

The last perfume bottle was lite using a honey combe with a diffuser on the front. The light was quite narrow therefore gave if it a shadow and is reflected on the bottle which look like circles.