LIGHT PLACEMENT
Light placement determines how your image appears with shadows, highlights, and texture. I use three di erent setups depending on what I want to emphasize.
I call these three lighting techniques basic, portrait and skim. The lights I use the most are 200 Lumen LED Super Bright Flip Lights (PSWITCH-12/48) available at Harbor Freight. They come with magnets and velcro on the back for easy attachment to a homemade stand. An electronic flash is another light source, but it can become more complicated depending on how your camera determines exposure using this light source. Another problem is that you would still want to use multiple lighting, which means adding flash units and slaves to trip the lights. With electronic flash, you cannot see the lighting eect until after the exposure, which complicates the placement of the lights. I would suggest starting with a continuous light source. If you are more advanced and have high-end electronic flash units with modeling lights, you should not experience the problems mentioned above.
BASIC LIGHTING
A basic lighting setup consists of two identical lights set at 45-degree angles to the object and at the same distance from the object. This gives uniform lighting with little if any shadows.
A PORTRAIT LIGHTING
A portrait lighting setup uses two identical lights at 45-degree angles to the object, but one light is set back about 1.5 times the distance of the other one. The set backlight is called the fill light, and the other one is called the main light. This creates a light shadow on the fill side that adds dimensionality to the subject.
SKIM LIGHTING
A skim lighting setup consists of two identical lights set at 15-degree angles to the object and at the same distance from the object. The skim lighting setup will call attention to the texture of the object.