Three Light Product Photography Tutorial

Today I have a quick and simple "how to" on putting together a nice slightly low key product shot with three lights. Here is the final result and then I will go through the steps on how to build the lighting to get this photograph:

The starting point as always is the background. The first thing is that I chose a black paper background to lower the look and feel to give a little mood. But a plain black background is a little boring by itself so I added a splash of slightly blue light to provide a separation of the product (in this case my favourite German beer mug) from the black background. I used a gridded snoot with a light blue translucent plastic cup inside, yes that's right, cup.  I have learnt to make do with what I have when I don't have the thing I actually want. ;-)

Ok, so here is how it looks with just the background light:

Not quite what I wanted because the snoot, despite being gridded still gives some light spill onto the product. Had to fix that so I put a flag onto the snoot to keep the light from hitting the beer mug and then got this result:

Aha! That's much better, nice background light without spill, just what I was actually after. So on to the main light. I wanted a large light source here so I implemented my own advice to use the bounce technique to good effect and bounced my softbox off the wall to the left of the room. Worked out ok and got this result:

I was happy with that outcome, but the shadow on the right is a bit too dim in this shot so I needed a fill light which I got by shooting another softbox onto the opposite wall and with the power output turned down a little from where the main light was set. I set it up, fired off a test shot and had some direct spill from the softbox which I cured by setting up a large flag to prevent that and only have light from the wall hitting the beer mug. Now we have a nice (almost) final shot that I am happy with:

And here is the final shot again (shown at the top of this post) after a just a touch of post production in Lightroom 4:

That is about the way I envisioned it in my minds eye and through a little gradual setting up I have a result that I am happy with. For now. Next time... black perspex seamless background! :-)

Here is a setup shot so you can see where the lights were and how they were placed to achieve the look in the final pic above:

All fairly simple and set up in the lounge. A few suggestions, get lots of light stands, it's always a pain having too few for lights, backdrops, flags, etc. rather have a couple too many than have to start looking around the house trying to figure out if the broomstick would work. Second, get lots of clamps for backdrops, and whatever else you want to keep fixed to a light stand or table. I use some cheap plastic ones I purchased at the local supermarket. They look like this:

So all that remains is for you to get shooting! If you don't have studio lights then try out the same thing with your speedlights, they will give the exact same result. If you don't have enough speedlights then maybe just get a couple of cheap studio lights, they are much more powerful than the speedlights and a whole lot cheaper as well. For a small home studio Elinchrom have a nice little kit called the D-Lite RX ONE which is very affordable and cheaper than buying two Nikon or Canon portable flashes, and stands, and adapters, and softboxes, and wireless triggers... you get the idea.

Don't be afraid to experiment. Have fun!

Another Take on Photographing a Bottle of Wine

As you know I recently posted something on shooting a bottle of wine in a light tent, to see it CLICK HERE.

Well, this time around I wanted to try something a little different than the last shoot and go for an entirely different look.
So I ditched the light tent and set up with a single Elinchrom D-Lite-it 2 with a 65x65cm light-box, and attached a strip of black card-stock to the front of it with two black clothing pegs effectively covering about 50% of the light-box straight down the middle. I also had two strips of black card-stock on either side of the bottle to subtract some light from the light-box behind the bottle of wine. There were also two light stands on the table with some white A4 sheets of paper clamped and placed to reflect some light back onto the bottle of wine. Maybe this is a little complicated, so let me just show you a picture:

The wine bottle is on top of two glasses which were a simple matter to edit out afterwards. The end result looks ok to me. :-)

And now, the same bottle of wine and same basic set-up as above, but this time I put the bottle onto a different surface. It really changes the whole look of the end result:

Venetian Painted Mask - a one light portrait.

Another version of a previous pic (in colour) from the same session that I posted here: Venetian Painted Mask

Nikon D90, Aperture Priority Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 105mm with VR on, hand held, f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO200, Nikon sb600 fired into a bounce umbrella to camera left.

Toni (with an "i"), photographed in my "Strobist" style studio.

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 105mm with VR on, hand held, f/11, 1/200s, ISO200.
A Nikon sb600 bounced in an umbrella to camera left set just slightly higher than the subject, and a Nikon sb700 bounced in an umbrella to camera right and somewhat higher than the subject (about 45 degrees), with both sb's on light stands and triggered via Nikon's excellent CLS.
Edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

A Quick Portrait.

Took a quick portrait this evening, setting up lights, shooting and packing back down all done in about 20 minutes!

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 90mm with VR on, hand held, f/11, 1/200s, ISO200, two Nikon sb's bounced into two bounce umbrellas, edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

Old Brass Bell shot with a Nikkor 40mm AF-S DX Micro f/2.8G

Nikon D90, AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G, Aperture Priority mode, ISO200, 1/80s, f9.0, two off-camera Speedlights into bounce umbrellas fired via Nikon's fantastic CLS system.

More on the junky tripod to super cool light stand conversion...

Ok, so maybe the light stand from a tripod is not super cool, but it was fun and more importantly it worked! So maybe fairly cool then.

Basically I had an old cheapy tripod that came with my Nikon F65 when I bought it for next to nothing. During November I needed a light stand to get my flash and shoot-through umbrella higher than an average cheapy tripod can manage, so I looked to the tripod that was too light to hold an SLR camera steady.

First I detached the head from the aluminium pipe it was mounted to and got this:

The black and white bits top and middle of the pipe will be explained soon.

I then took a piece of chromed curtain rod of the right diameter to fit the head mount and stuck the business end of the head mount into the pipe, drilled a small hole and screwed it in both sides like so:

See the screw? Easy, with only basic DIY skills needed... and a drill... with a suitable sized drill bit. If you don't know what a drill bit is just ask your friends and the first one that knows has earned the privilege of assisting you with this little project! ;-)

Next up I had to drill a hole into the head somewhere, without destroying the heads usefulness, for the umbrella shaft to be pushed in to. Time to ask the DIY savvy friend for help again... Here is where I put my hole, yours may be in a different spot. (You will have to use some common sense on this step.)

I chose that particular position because the drill bit could go all the way through without damaging any important bits inside. Make sure you get this right otherwise you may render you old tripod head quite unable to mount the flash. Also make sure that the diameter of the drill bit is the same as the umbrella shaft, too small and it won't mount, too big and it will fall out.

While it looks oh so neat from the outside, I'm afraid the same cannot be said of the inside, but heck, nobody looks in there anyway... except all of the readers of this blog. Darn!

This is what it looks like with the umbrella inserted into the hole. NICE!

Finally, in order for the curtain rod to fit snugly over the original aluminium pipe that the head used to be mounted to I simply wrapped some electrical tape top and middle and by simple trial and error got it just right:

So that's what those black and white things were! I wanted it to be easily portable, so that's why I didn't screw the curtain rod to the tripod. Now it simply pulls off!

Here's the whole lot together:

The dangly bit hanging from the umbrella shaft is a long balloon that I tie onto the shaft to stop it from sliding in when it is pointed up to use as a bounce umbrella, or I tie it on the other side to stop it from falling out when I am shooting through and it is pointed down. Simple is good.

Here is a pic of the set-up using this rig while shooting Santa in December:

It worked flawlessly!

Here is another shot taken with the same:

This last one was bounced to cover more area while the Santa shots were all shot through the umbrella.

I should probably have just gone and bought a light stand but hey it would not have been half as much fun!
(This was also free since I had all the bits...) (No, not drill bits... ask your friend.)