Well, THAT was a pain in the A**!!! Most challenging photoshoot to date.

Josh Bass said:
My girlfriend does photography and has a great book about product photography that had detailed descriptions of the setups and how the angles/geometry work for lighting shiny reflective things. If youre interested i can find out the exact title.
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When I first read that, I thought that you were saying that your girlfriend had WRITTEN, "...a great book about product photography...". When I went to Amazon to look for the book, I saw, in an extended description of the book, a photo of the authors....

lighting book.jpg

For a couple of seconds there I was like, "Uhhhh.. Uhhhh... Uhhhh... Not that there is anything wrong with that...."!!...

Yeah, so your girlfriend OWNS a "...a great book about product photography..."!!! Gottcha!!!

I am not normally an idiot... I just play one on the internet!!! Just sayin', ya know!


When the check for this gig clears I just might pick up that book.

Thanks for the recommendation Josh.
 
Well, the owner of the company called me the other day and thanked me for doing the photos. It was funny, he said that he has been in the tool making business for 25 years and he never know how beautiful his tools were ...(...?!..). He seemed sincerely impressed and appreciative. I thought that was pretty cool.
 
Yeah industrial stuff can look really cool under certain conditions. The book seemed really useful when i pages through it, again, if thats the one I'm thinking of. Should blow your mind and give you plenty of ideas if you want to get really arty with it next time you shoot objects like that.
 
David G. Smith said:
Well, the owner of the company called me the other day and thanked me for doing the photos. It was funny, he said that he has been in the tool making business for 25 years and he never know how beautiful his tools were ...(...?!..). He seemed sincerely impressed and appreciative. I thought that was pretty cool.
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Looks like you have a lifelong client…..
Should be fun after about 10 years, eh?
I have a client that started like this.
Now I work for them full-time.
 
I did beverage for years... reflective cylinders, man, what a pain. Main issue is the edge closest to camera reflects the lens/camera back... even if you shoot through a white card with a hole, you still get a black line.

Some of those shots look like the edges have blown out. Too much white hitting the lens will do that (unless you were going for that). I use grey or black cards to frame the shot, and cut them out it post, keep the blaring white to a minimum.

Other issue with products is how bad the printing is on most packaging when you get up close. Really need heroes, or you need to get their AI files and have some retouching fun.

bookoo.jpgshotz.jpg
 
Michael Schrengohst said:
Looks like you have a lifelong client…..
Should be fun after about 10 years, eh?
I have a client that started like this.
Now I work for them full-time.
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Yeah, we'll see. I would really like to do a video or two for them. It would be a challenge, but I would really like to get some close ups of these types of tools being made in their CNC machines. I watched a few being done and it is kind of a cool (In a geeky way) process.

Michael Carter said:
I did beverage for years... reflective cylinders, man, what a pain. Main issue is the edge closest to camera reflects the lens/camera back... even if you shoot through a white card with a hole, you still get a black line.

Some of those shots look like the edges have blown out. Too much white hitting the lens will do that (unless you were going for that). I use grey or black cards to frame the shot, and cut them out it post, keep the blaring white to a minimum.

Other issue with products is how bad the printing is on most packaging when you get up close. Really need heroes, or you need to get their AI files and have some retouching fun.
Click to expand...


One of the things I really had concerns about is just how much going to a printed catalog would affect the image quality, especially contrast. I looked around a bit on the 'net but never came up with real answers to that. I went with an assumption that the final image will have higher contrast. The tools themselves (The silver colored bases) are all over exposed a bit. That was a deliberate decision and just seemed right to me based on the mental math I did on the whole thing. The most important thing to the images was showing the cutting surfaces, which are so very intricate. I really want the detail of the cutting surfaces hold up through the printing process and if other parts of the tool are not as clear I am cool with that. That white back ground is a chore, but this was not a gig where I was going to be doing much post work on the images. There were just too many images to deal with in a very short turn around time. I made that very clear to the client when making the deal.
 
Its all a matter of rutine.... One of our departments do catalogue work and we push off around a hundred packs a day.
My best days I could do around 25 shots if there was a need for shadows on the white background.. This was with more than one object on each shot.
Really... Packshotting is the most hated photography amongst Danish students, but thats probably because its the first thing we learn when starting out. Id almost say its a fact based type of photography. There are a few setups you can use to cover 90% of shots and then modify those setups when needed.

Lightingwise... Theres a reason we still use flash over continous lighting. Its just a lot easier to work with when mass producing... Fx if you are already at f22 but need to go down two tenths of a stop....
 
While not for profit, I do have to set up small table top product 'studio' to photograph the Wife's typewriter collection. I use to do some amount of product photography in the late 70's with my 4x5... for 'pay' but never got so excited by the area to make that my daily bread activity.
 
I just saw the print pre-production proofs and I am very pleased. As I noted above, I over exposed a bit and shoot a skosh flat, in anticipation that going to printing would add contrast , and I have to say that I made the right call on that. The shots l did look very good. All in all this was a great learning experience.
 
Some nice shots!

Chrome/reflective products is a bit tricky at first... but when you realize that you need to light the things you want reflected and not so much the product it self it becomes easier.

Using a light tent is a bit counterproductive, as you loose control of defining the reflections.


soap_holder2.jpg

soap_setup.jpg
 
Nice!

Did you make a mask in post to darken the background ? I can't really make out the lighting.

Any chance of a setup shot ?
 
No chance :)

The glowing beer is a separate frame comped in (over an empty glass that was in the main shot)

Simply - setup on black inside a huge light tent (lit from one side and open at the back to black behind) with various extra elements to create tonality like the left catchlight.

The top logo is a seperate shot, but same setup, just different focal plane

S
 
Ah that makes sense then. :-)

My personal preference would have been a little more defined highlight to convey the brass material and make it a little more 3d.
 
Indeed -The left highlight is good, could have done that on the right too.. the skill (for us all to develop) in these images is mainly 'perception' or 'vision' - choose how you want it to look and then shooting is 'fairly' straightforward once you have that vision in the head.

S
 
That is true!



Think this was my first job where i had to shoot chrome/reflective products. A few years ago. Took me some time to get the shadows and highlights where i wanted them...:-)

scissor.jpg
 
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