Outside of work I do a lot of what i call my 'hobbyist' photography (see my flickr) but i also do a bit of paid work. Stuff like weddings, portraiture and just odds and sods keep things interesting.
My latest call-up was from my former editorial assistant, Mark, who now works as a technical writer for a company that produces parts for major motor manufacturers. Aside from the fact that I can't believe we've taken such different directions since leaving the magazine we used to put together, I was massively surprised - and impressed - at the enthusiasm he talked about his new job with.
Anyway, he was putting together a big presentation for a European truck manufacturer (in France) and needed some images of the parts his company produces. Being the obliging mate who owns a camera and some speedlights I said I'd do it, if only to add variety to the week. Jobs like this are bread 'n' butter work to some photographers and there's nothing wrong with that - too many newcomers think it (being a pro) is all big budgets, exotic locations and art directors who who give you free reign to be creative. Unfortunately it's not but that's fine by me because I live in the real world and these are real world jobs. Reality is good and I was looking forward to doing something different.
Anyway, how to shoot the products? Mark had an idea of the spaces he needed to fill in his presentation, so that was a big help, and he knew he needed everything shot against white, again not a problem. I generally loathe shooting on white, only for the reason I do so much of it in my day job when I'm in the studio. But it's the easiest route to get clear, high quality shots that can be worked into text easily and for product demonstration it's a no-brainer.
As you can see from the set-up shot it's all very DIY; a couple of sheets of A4 paper with some paper (the brief from Mark in actual fact) as a mini-reflector just to fill the shadows. My 28" Westcott Apollo above to act as the main light from above seemed a good choice because any shadows would be soft. A couple of images were to be used as 10-15 per cent transparency backgrounds so I thought this softness would be important so the text wouldn't be outgunned by the image.
Of course, everyone has their blond moments. Mine was to set the softbox up but because it's based on a brolly attachment, I fitted the flash and trigger to the coldshoe in the normal fashion, speedlight facing forward. It was only when I took a few shots and even the mini-reflector couldn't kill the shadows enough did I realise that the shadows looked to hard so the Apollo wasn't doing it's job.
Take two; with the flash the right way round this time (i.e. firing into the back of the softbox) it was game-on. Much better light this time. Shooting at around f/5 and 1/100th (the flash was at 1/8th) everything looked bang-on.
After being imported into Lightroom 3, the image adjustments were minimal; aside from sharpening, I decided to kill the blue channel in the Luminance section a little to take some density out of the shadows, plus I used the gradient tool to effectively feather out to white on the edges. I do this as force of habit these days because I've had too many times in the past when things have looked all-white and they haven't been. You feel like a right plonker when that seamless join between image and blank paper can actually be seen. I used to do it all in Photoshop with brush tools and layer masks but LR3 makes it so much easier. A quick run over the outside edges of each image with the cursor to check that it was 100 per cent white (look at your histogram to check this) and they were ready to be outputted. Export with a long edge dimension of 1000 pixels is enough for Powerpoint and makes e-mailing the images over.
Thankfully, I got a text 10 minutes later saying all was good but could I reshoot the background image with a different part in shot. The beauty of modern tech (especially mobile phones) is that Mark just sent a text message with an image of the part he wanted and I could re-shoot knowing what was needed. A few minutes later the shot is e-mailed over and it's job done with a happyfriend client.
My latest call-up was from my former editorial assistant, Mark, who now works as a technical writer for a company that produces parts for major motor manufacturers. Aside from the fact that I can't believe we've taken such different directions since leaving the magazine we used to put together, I was massively surprised - and impressed - at the enthusiasm he talked about his new job with.
Anyway, he was putting together a big presentation for a European truck manufacturer (in France) and needed some images of the parts his company produces. Being the obliging mate who owns a camera and some speedlights I said I'd do it, if only to add variety to the week. Jobs like this are bread 'n' butter work to some photographers and there's nothing wrong with that - too many newcomers think it (being a pro) is all big budgets, exotic locations and art directors who who give you free reign to be creative. Unfortunately it's not but that's fine by me because I live in the real world and these are real world jobs. Reality is good and I was looking forward to doing something different.
Anyway, how to shoot the products? Mark had an idea of the spaces he needed to fill in his presentation, so that was a big help, and he knew he needed everything shot against white, again not a problem. I generally loathe shooting on white, only for the reason I do so much of it in my day job when I'm in the studio. But it's the easiest route to get clear, high quality shots that can be worked into text easily and for product demonstration it's a no-brainer.
As you can see from the set-up shot it's all very DIY; a couple of sheets of A4 paper with some paper (the brief from Mark in actual fact) as a mini-reflector just to fill the shadows. My 28" Westcott Apollo above to act as the main light from above seemed a good choice because any shadows would be soft. A couple of images were to be used as 10-15 per cent transparency backgrounds so I thought this softness would be important so the text wouldn't be outgunned by the image.
Of course, everyone has their blond moments. Mine was to set the softbox up but because it's based on a brolly attachment, I fitted the flash and trigger to the coldshoe in the normal fashion, speedlight facing forward. It was only when I took a few shots and even the mini-reflector couldn't kill the shadows enough did I realise that the shadows looked to hard so the Apollo wasn't doing it's job.
Take two; with the flash the right way round this time (i.e. firing into the back of the softbox) it was game-on. Much better light this time. Shooting at around f/5 and 1/100th (the flash was at 1/8th) everything looked bang-on.
After being imported into Lightroom 3, the image adjustments were minimal; aside from sharpening, I decided to kill the blue channel in the Luminance section a little to take some density out of the shadows, plus I used the gradient tool to effectively feather out to white on the edges. I do this as force of habit these days because I've had too many times in the past when things have looked all-white and they haven't been. You feel like a right plonker when that seamless join between image and blank paper can actually be seen. I used to do it all in Photoshop with brush tools and layer masks but LR3 makes it so much easier. A quick run over the outside edges of each image with the cursor to check that it was 100 per cent white (look at your histogram to check this) and they were ready to be outputted. Export with a long edge dimension of 1000 pixels is enough for Powerpoint and makes e-mailing the images over.
Thankfully, I got a text 10 minutes later saying all was good but could I reshoot the background image with a different part in shot. The beauty of modern tech (especially mobile phones) is that Mark just sent a text message with an image of the part he wanted and I could re-shoot knowing what was needed. A few minutes later the shot is e-mailed over and it's job done with a happy
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