Product Photography - Comparing notes with Rob

[RainMotorsports]

Well Rob if any of the companies want to know if this site can help sell products you can just point them here. I needed a keyboard to use the laptop along side the desktop and the price and your review sold it. Now you know I cant resist taking shots of something you have already done. Even though I always shoot my stuff.

I am not a terribly artistic person and I see Rob as a creative as well as a professional minded person. In emulating these shots you start to really see how each shots details had a real purpose. At a quick glance you might not notice the selective focus on the media button shots. Often times with the limited light Rob can create you have to open the aperture up causing depth of field to be shallow. But on these shots it isn't a limitation. Its there to draw your focus to the detail he wishes to discuss.

I have had some enjoyable conversations with Rob Williams over achieving results with limited resources and how with a little understanding and education anyone with a few hundred bucks can probably get into the niche of product photography.


First shot I went to do was not Robs but rather the press kit image that happens to be the style of my keyboard.

It turned out alright I messed the angle up and the editing leaves something to be desired. A little too warm in color balance and my one other full shot was the same way.

The required equipment to do this is a large sheet of paper preferably or cloth. I have a medium sized sheet which almost wont cut it. While professional photographers often have strobes and diffusers, if Joe McNally's "Hot Shoe Diaries" taught me anything it is that even a pro can get by without. A dSLR or a hot shoe equipped point and shoot and a cheap aftermarket flash can get you places. My Sigma flash is anything but cheap but compared to Nikon's offerings it is less expensive and more powerful than the SB800. The SB900 was not out when I bought into this.

Here is the article Rob posted - http://techgage.com/article/logitech_wireless_keyboard_k360_review/

One of the challenges faced with shooting this is the glare on the surface of the keyboard. We are using bounce flash to light our shots and get good diffused light. But going straight up can be a problem, going forward if a wall is too close can cause uneven lighting. We often end up shooting the flash backwards which is an issue because of your head.

My attempts at the shots within it:

Rob I think you did an awesome job on all your shots. I would have to judge them as the standard in which to start my shots and this is something that would be difficult to reach. I messed up the last shot by not getting the light to reflect from the top of the USB adapter. Most of the angles are off, most of it doesn't matter per say but I am disappointed in myself anyways.

People may notice a little more texture in my shots but there isn't anything lacking in Rob's in that regard. Many people probably do not know one of the things Rob has to do. In order to make fast loading pages and keep site costs down the images need to be of small file size. The compression eats away at that detail.

 

[Tharic-Nar]

It's the contrast, it's a little too high, drop it back and the blacks will even out. You also have some Chromatic Aberrations going on, that's the blue/cyan tint around edges you see, that's usually the result of lens distortion of the flash. Contrast is easy to fix, the Chromatic - not so much.

Rob's shots are always decent, has a good camera and setup, though they sometimes need a little TLC which is where I stroke my cat, Ego, and touch up the pics a little in Photoshop. Camera Raw is an awesome utility, which you can get with Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. Inside Raw is the ability to apply lens correction, which can correct distortion, vignette and chromatic aberration, as well as a lot of balance issues with colour, lighting, and so on. The catch is, you need a camera that supports a RAW format, which varies from camera to camera.

While I touch up a lot of images for Rob and the crew, it can't beat a decent picture taken in the first place... I can't do miracles (though some of my pics started in a hell of state - I need a decent flash unit...).

Wait till you have to take pictures of a nice big piece of glossy black plastic... that's when the real challenge comes.

By the way, how's the keyboard?

 

[RainMotorsports]

I always shoot NEF RAW that is until I switch to take a quick picture that wont have time to make it to a machine before being printed. Then I forget to change it back which actually happened with this shot. I bought the SIgma EF-530 DG Super because its features matched the SB800 and depending on if you trust Sigma's measurements more powerful. It was 220 bucks at the when I bought it over 2 years ago. Robs flash is a little down on power but the quality of the unit is superb. Ive seen a quantaray that goes for 99 bucks and decent power, that with a used PowerShot S5 or something would probably get someone going. Quality with that setup would be a bit rough in comparison to better equipment.

Yeah all the text and the top left of the usb adapter, which is a high contrast border and since I would not blame the 35mm prime I used (not talking about the flash caused problem) I would probably blame the sensor. Its a Nikon D60 while the sensor is a size and cut above those found in the prosumer style point and shoots that usually exhibit aberrations on high contrast borders its still crap. I have yet to shoot with the continuous lighting I am using for video with the dSLR couldn't tell you for sure if I am wrong. But I am used to seeing the occurrence on smaller and bad sensors of course combined with terrible lenses in daylight source captures.

Cant say glossy plastic, clear acrylic, glass and metal especially shooting against white paper trying to balance blowing the paper white without losing anything from the shiny object haven't crossed my path. First time I started this a couple years ago it became pretty clear that if the subject survived a quick level correction brought back the color. Mind you at a loss.

I normally use PSP X2 which I own will upgrade to X5 probably, the raw tool improved in X3 and X4. I use the trial of photoshop now and then like i did for this but until I can afford the Production Premium I will stick with PSP. Lightroom is a nicety I would like to have but I typically adjust the white balance with Nikon View NX 2 and then import it. The default curves on Nikons applications save me time in my editing since my results tend to look like how it spits it out.

Haven't used it yet was drafting up a web site design proposal after i finished that. Couldnt find the adapter either, just hit me writing this its inside the keyboard....

Yeah no I would love some insight and knowledge from other people. I kinda make things up as I go along its how I learn. I haven't really been doing much photography the last year kinda went stale after changing from outdoor work to indoor.

 

[Tharic-Nar]

I have a Canon Powershot G10 - one of those prosumer point'n'shoots, the biggest weakness with it is low light levels, it really can't handle them at all, due mainly to the high density small size sensor. The lens can cause a lot of distortion on wide-angle and the Chromatic aberration is awful with flash photography. So in order to get round all that, I have to use a tripod with 0.5 - 2 second exposures with varying aperture. The built-in flash is.... well, it's built-in, I'll leave it at that.

Now, household lighting is not suitable for photography because of the low temperature lights, typically 2400-3000k, far too yellow to correct effectively via a temperature shift in software. If I go outside, or near a window, then I face a constantly shifting light source and other obstructions. I will point out that the camera performs very well outside with lots of light.

Recently though, I managed to get some 6400k daylight bulbs and they've made taking pictures significantly easier. I still need better diffusion in order to remove some of the focused glare, but I can live with that. £10 Daylight bulbs is much cheaper than a decent flash, though admittedly, a flash is more versatile for photography.

Sure, a DSLR with a decent Flash would be nice, but I work with what I've got, and what I've got is a decent PC and a lot of Photoshop experience. RAW to the rescue... and a decent monitor - damn that helps a lot... (DELL U2410)

The resident photographer is Brett, maybe we can convince him to come up with his two cents .

 

[RainMotorsports]

ISO 400 on the D60 is when noise starts to become perceivable and I refuse to go lower than that. The Pentax K-R I also have at my disposal has the same noise around 1600. Newer sensor which is par for the course but also high resolution which tends to reverse that trend back into worse noise. My attempt at the Logitech press kit shot was at 400 and im not happy about it though at that size and with the processing its negligible.

G10 was a nice camera back in the day still is and if you dont mind something ridiculous looking you can have the flash. Smaller lower power units are nice for outdoor group shots. But you want some serious power for product photography bounce. With the 35mm 1.8 I don't always need a whole lot of power because we can open up say around 2.5 versus 4ish on the 17-50. But when it comes to stopping down the aperture and or blowing the paper white its needed otherwise we are cranking sensitivity to make up for the light.

I have sync cables so if I ever get 2 more flash units I can do some creative and powerful setups. But not so sure I care to spend the money these days. When it gets tough I tend to just break out a reflector.

Recently though, I managed to get some 6400k daylight bulbs and they've made taking pictures significantly easier. I still need better diffusion in order to remove some of the focused glare, but I can live with that. £10 Daylight bulbs is much cheaper than a decent flash, though admittedly, a flash is more versatile for photography.

Yeah I picked up 400 watt equivalent CFL's and have them in 10 inch reflectors for video. I cheaped out on the 5000K balance but like the 6400K 60 watt bulbs I tested with the white balance works out very well in comparison to 2700K. In my research most camera's auto white balance ranges actually start at around 3000K so incandescents and other bulbs balanced in the range never stood a chance. Not sure if there is some incapability in writing an algorithm to determine white balance at the temperature or what.

Standard CFL's are not ideal for color rendering at all in comparison to metal halide but they do a better job than some people will admit. I couldnt tell you if the bulbs I have have a decent spectral power distribution or not. You can also use fixtures at equivalent powers that they cant handle in more conventional bulbs.

 

[Tharic-Nar]

Hah... ISO 400, I wish mine could handle that. Technically, it can do 1600, realistically, it does 100. The noise above 100 is horrendous; sure, I may be able to scrub some of it away in software filtering, but that just significantly reduces detail, defeating the purpose of taking the picture in the first place. The curse of the megapixel race (14.7MP on this little sensor? nah, wasn't going to work). I may be able to get 200 out of it, but since I'm using a tripod anyway, it doesn't matter too much.

The daylight bulbs I picked up were of the S.A.D. variety CFLs used in standard household fittings. Using 2x 1750 lumen bulbs, or 100-150 Watt equivalent. It's not so much the power I'm after, though that helps, it's the actual colour range. These are supposed to be 6400K, but the camera is picking them up as 5750k, which isn't bad at all, and ideal if I'm honest, since higher ranges tend to look too blue.

Now, because I don't have a white-washed piece of card to post the picture up as-is (though card is used), I have to go through the slow task of cropping around the object in question. I am rather adept with the pen-tool in Photoshop, which is how I make my selections. So when it comes to backgrounds for larger pieces, I don't 'need' a white-drop. What I need is reduced reflections and colour bleed with no overlapping shadows.