Studio product assignment: Few tricks on how to shoot high-glossy subject

[Koloskov]

It’s been a long time since my last report from this assignment and I know you guys were missing these articles. Honestly, I’ve missed them too. It’s cool and exiting to run a camera tests, write books and do classes, but I know how interesting the information from the real assignments are.

So here is one of the shots I’ve done with my new technical studio camera, Cambo Ultima D and PhaseOne P25+ MF digital back (more about this setup is here). Despite its added complexity, I enjoy every moment working with this camera. This time I’ve used it to get better focus on a composition of cosmetic brush set photographed at sharp angle.

Here it is one of the final images delivered to a client:



If you’ve been reading my blog, you probably recognized Anisa International product, since we’ve worked on many shots for them. Cosmetic brushes one of my favorite (after the liquid:-) subjects, as they are very nice looking and yet always challenging subject for a product photographer.

Lets see the lighting setup:


The lighting is similar to other shots I’ve done for similar brushes: my shots for Anisa International. Lights #1 and #2 PCB E-640 in constant color mode were the main lights, but they were mostly for the brush hair. Glossy brush handles can’t be lit directly, they were reflecting the table (vertical standing brushes) or the studio ceiling (horizontally positioned ones).

This is why I had that large diffuser on top of the composition. Another strobe #4 (PCB E-640, CC mode) with a barn-doors attached helped me to create a gradient (more about why I use gradients is here) which can be seen on the horizontally positioned brushes.

Light #3 was added to create slight highlights on a brush hair (true “hairlight”: -).

The image you’ve seen in the beginning of the article is a composite one, created from 2 separate shots. This is an usual solution we use to photograph a group of glossy products. I am talking about the technique of separating the composition to it’s individual items (or groups of items) to eliminate unwanted reflection from one to another.

Side view of the studio setup:

Lets see how we did is this time.

This is how the image of the whole set looked like as-is, directly from the camera:



While some of the “internal” reflections are fine, showing the nature of glossy handles, the others (like those on the left brushes) are too distracting. Therefore, we did this shot without the bold brushes:

Ops.. Hit the limit of max 4 images can be posted here (why such limitation??). The good thing that I have the rest of the article is on the blog:

Studio product assignment: Few tricks on how to shoot high-glossy subject

let me know if you have any questions. Enjoy the read;-)

Alex Koloskov

[zona5101]

Outstanding. Thanks for sharing this!