I don't claim to be an expert, but am fortunate to have among my friends, several professional photographers who have patiently pointed out my errors as I learned. Now to get right down to business, here it is -- the inevitable HORRIBLE EXAMPLE. Compare these two photographs:

Left:
A. Too close, and too high; distorted perspective.
B. Too little depth-of-field; bottom of panel out of focus.
C. Panel reflects part of paper foreground and tripod; lid reflects white background.
D. One direct floodlight, 45-degrees off axis.

Right:
A. Shot with a medium telephoto Lens from 7 feet away.
B. Lens stopped down to f16.
C. Paper adjusted for uniform reflections in panel (but some panels will look better black). Black cloth hung above set to kill lid reflections.
D. Two diffuse lights, 45-degrees off.

More tips: if your focus is perfect, you didn't move the camera during exposure, and you still can't read the dials in the photo, you are up against the limitations of your lens or film. If you were using Plus-X, try PanatomicX. Try a lens with better resolution or lower flare level (borrow a friend's Nikon or whatever). Use your lens at its point of maximum resolution -- usually one or two stops down from its maximum aperture. Keep light sources, reflections, and large white areas out of the lens' field of view. Or get a larger-format camera. For what it's worth, I use a Bronica S2A (2-1/4" square format) and Plus-X developed in D-76.

If you're shooting a black panel with black knobs and a dark cabinet, you can increase the tonal separation between the shades of black by overexposing about two stops. Light areas of course will go completely white, but this usually won't matter.

For long exposures at low light levels, you must correct for 'reciprocity.' (Briefly, this means that a certain exposure time at a certain light level is not the same as ten times that exposure at one-tenth of the light). If your light meter says one second, use 2; if 5, use 20; if 10, use 50 seconds, and so on.

The proper exposure is best determined by a light-meter reading from a Kodak gray card, 18% reflectance. Alternatively, you can meter from a white area (90% reflectance) and divide by 5.

A black panel will not necessarily photograph as black -- it depends on what it is reflecting. It often looks better if it reflects a white area and comes out gray, as in the 'good' example above.

Here is the setup for the second photo. The two lights are aimed backward at white sheets hung from the ceiling, for diffuse light. The background is white seamless paper. No, the subject is not a radio, but a Radio Disease Killer quack medical machine of 1926.

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