[Leica] Copy Stand Lighting Question

["Richard Clompus" <rclompus@voicenet.com>]

Dear Fellow LUGnuts,

I will be photographing ophthalmic lenses and glasses for use in my
lectures.  I will be ordering a small table top copy stand from Delta 1 that
has white plexiglass so it looks like a seamless background.  I want to have
the glasses and lenses "float in air" without any background detail.  I
thought I'd lay them on the white curved plexiglass or on a clear plexiglass
plate suspended over the white plexiglass curved background.

The hard part for me is the lighting.  Should I get a light tent to go over
it and try to use one flash outside the tent - or try to use two strobes
(one on either side) for shadow free lighting?  This type of high precision
photography is new to me.  I'll have a Leica R8 and a 60/2.8 or 100/2.8 Apo
Leica macro lenses.

Can anyone offer some suggestions for me?  I have some books on photographic
lighting and illustration but they don't cover this topic very well.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Happy shooting,

Richard Clompus, OD
West Chester, PA soon to be Roanoke, VA (Leica and Zeiss Information capital
of the world) <bg>