The background is a little "busy" :-)

Here's what the lighting looks like. Light above and in front of the table but very low.

for the heck of it try it behind the subject and very high and place a large white cardboard in front of the subject. In fact, if you are shooting close enough you could even cut a hole in the card for your lens to poke through.

Reason for this is that shiny things reflect what reflect off of them. So dark things will show as real real dark if there are dark things in the room.

What you want is a nice main light from in back to give specular highlights and rim out the subject and a directionless nonevident fill light in front that lightens the dark barrel and scope while at the same time reducing contrast.

Another tip would be to place a piece of shower curtain between your light and the subject so as to lessen the harshness of the light.

You can also use small pieces of bent over white cardboard just out of the range of the lens to bounce light into some of the dark shadows.

22WRF

Thanks...I have a 4'x4' white foam board that I've used before but I forgot it this time. I'm in the basement so height is a problem unless I move to the floor. The lights are covered with rice paper for diffusion.

I've done the hole in the paper for watch and knife pictures.

rich

I am not sure about lighting advice, but a plain background would be more to my liking.

Too busy and it seems to me to detract from the object one is photographing!

Just an opinion and we know about "opinions" . . . Don't we?

Not bad!

Light balance is critical. Light source should be about the same size of the subject if possible. My favorite is a reflected 36" umbrella as shown in this picture of the 7WSM.

It's not easy. Some adjustment is also possible with an editing program.



Of course with a large enough studio and lighting source, poor equipment limitations are overcome and results are somewhat better:



100 year old Cedar stumps and near perfect diffused sun light show custom .204 Ruger off to some advantage!