Latest Assignment

Latest Assignment

by William Lulow

Recently, I was asked to do a rather simple shot of a piece of dental equipment. The client was there to direct the shoot, so no agency, art director or anyone else present. I find that many of my product shoots kind of begin this way. A company needs some shots of their products. They don’t have budget for ad agency, art directors or anyone else for that matter, so I find myself getting the information about the product and how the client wants it photographed usually when I show up for the shoot. So, I come prepared (if I have to shoot on location at the client’s offices) with various items from my studio that can aid in product photography. Typically, extras can be:

• Extra reflector cards
• Clay or Tacki-Wax
• Soup cans for support
• Masking tape
• Utility knife
• Laptop for doing tethered shots for previews
• Extra extension cord
• Boom arm with counterweights

Most of these kinds of shots are table-tops and most companies have some kind of conference room with a large-enough table to use. Any kind of shot that would require a special background I would have to shoot in the studio because props like light tables, set ups for food, etc. need specialized equipment which is often difficult to take on location.

So here is the product shot I just did:

Here, you will notice that this “beauty shot” of the product was made with the LEDs  illuminated. It was achieved by cutting a small hole in the background for the power cord which was hidden by the machine itself.  It was then made with the camera on a tripod and the lights in the room turned off. Exposure was ISO100, 1/5th of a second at f/16. Exposure was facilitated by the use of a cable release. When you are shooting with this kind of setup, it’s the flash that makes the prime exposure and it is usually at about 1/500th of a second. So, whatever other lights you may want to record need to be sort of “burned in.” Here, the LED lights on the machine itself were pretty dim, which necessitated the longer exposure time.

Here is what the setup looked like:

As I might have mentioned previously, most product shots like this need to be shot with a light bank or softbox. One of the reasons for this is that this light modifier keeps the light soft in nature, but concentrates it in one direction. (An umbrella, on the other hand, tends to spread the light over a much larger area since the light is BOUNCED). The softbox also produces a rectangular reflection which is more preferable for objects especially shiny ones. Here’s a good example of that:

You can see how the reflections are all VERTICAL and add a kind of symmetry to the image. Can you imagine what this might have looked like using photographic umbrellas? The reflections would have been really ugly!

Another example of where a rectangular softbox is the right tool to use for these kinds of shots:

This shot is another example of how slow shutter speeds can help to burn in objects with very little light:

Here, the computer screen needed to have a longer exposure in order to make the image show in the photograph. The rest of the exposure was provided by the flash. It is a helpful lesson to learn about how to make the lights on a machine really stand out. You have to remember to keep any other ambient light in the room either off or down to minimum illumination.

When I have a product to shoot, I usually like to use my laptop and CAPTURE ONE software to show the client what the images look like while we are shooting them. The display is, of course, larger than the camera’s LCD and affords the opportunity to examine the images more closely. I should note that I do not use this method when I shoot portraits or head shots because I believe it interferes with the natural flow of a session. The orange wire in the setup shot is the tether from camera to computer.

Knowing these kinds of techniques is what separates the seasoned professionals from others who just haven’t had enough experience with these kind of shoots.