Vodka Series

Is been some time I didn't touch my blog, busy for a Convocation Photoshoot, my current job and of course my long wait Mini Studio! RAWR!!! Now I'm back with my mini studio!!

Although it is not fully equip yet, but is good enough to start some small product shooting. Slowly I'll add in more things in future. Here is a photo of all the things that I used to make my own lamp. Yeap, that it is! A light bulb with a aluminium

In this post, I will show you my shots for a bottle of Vodka. Basically this is my setup as shown below. Object in the middle, and two lights at the side. As you can see, the light is diffused with the cotton made oil filter. I kinda like this diffuser, it perform his job by diffusing light, it can hold high temperature and of course it is cheap, $1.50 for a pack, it comes with two pieces in it.

Here, you can see the white backdrop. It is actually a wooden stick on two "stand" that is normally used to hang clothes. Instead of hanging cloths on the stick, I clipped my mahjong paper on it. I used 3 pieces to make sure it looks solid enough. Else you will be able to see through it when the lights are on.

I have my camera mounted on a tripod and a 50mm f1.8 on it. I shoot at ISO 100, Aperture at f11 and shutter speed around 1/30. To make sure the lights does not affect the shoot, I took a pre-shot without any lighting except the natural lights. If the picture is absolutely black in colour, I assume it as the natural light does not affect my photo. Regarding to the white balance, it is pre-adjust before the shoot, with the lights on.

In between the shooting progress, I used two different colour of card board, which is black and white as reflector. Black reflector for white background and white reflector for black background. Here are the results.

For this photo, the black background is not dark enough, that is why it turns a bit brownish. In the future, I will need a 100% black backdrop and a 100% dark room to make a black background shoot.

White background and white object, give a very clean and simple feeling. I feel that it has a classier look than other colour combination. There is a mistake I did in this photo, too dark on the bottle cap and the old man logo. And the reflection is not that nice. I need a better reflective card in the future. The wordings, I just copy from the web. Woops....

Adjust to a much cooler temperature white balance gives a very icy feeling. I spray some water on it. So it looks icy cold. As it just came out from the fridge.

Placing the object in the center of the frame, create a stronger impact towards the object. It leads the viewer's sight directly to the object then only to the text around it. Meanwhile, there are actually two exposures in this shot. One is the bottle, and the other one is the bottle cap. Then I merge them in post processing.

Thinking out of the box, I copy five bottles of Vodka into one single frame instead of only one bottle of Vodka. Then I fill in different colour for each of them. This give you a total different feelings than the previous photos. I feel a bit old school in this photo. You can go to my flickr for a larger view.

I hope you guys like these photos. If you have any suggestion or comments, feel free to post it here. C & C are all welcome. Your feedback is most welcome.

Cheers,
Lu Ting Jieh

First DIY Product Shooting!!

Finally I got my chance to play with my new toys as I had posted previously. I made two stupid mistakes, did not plan on how to set things up and did not bring my external flash. So I ended up spending more than half and hour to do the set up and make a instant bouncer for my pop up flash.

As you can see from the image below, this is the setup for my product photography shooting.
***Hopefully you can see the words in the picture***

I use a box as the backdrop support and a few pieces of A3 papers as backdrop. So it is does not show any transparentness.Then 2 main lights with diffuser at the side. At first, I thought of shooting with only 2 main lights and that is just not working. Without any choice, I had to use my pop up flash to add in more lights from the top. So I cut down the diffuser, and put an A3 paper on top as a reflector. As shown in the picture. 

In order to avoid direct flash, I instantly make a bouncer for it. So the light can bounce to the A3 reflector and flash on top of the product. It do helps!! A LOT!!!! Here is another two pictures showing the left and right side of the set up and another one when I turn on the main lights with the room lights off.

I started to shot with my prime lens, 50mm f1.8 which I can't really handle it for this shooting. So I change back to my kit lens 18-55mm which has a the shortest minimum focus distance, 0.18m among all my lenses.  Where I can place my camera real close to the object.

I tried to shoot at f8, where more people recommend to use. But I feel that f14 gives a sharper image when I zoom into the picture from my camera. Perhaps I should have shoot in both aperture and view it in PC. Never mind, I'll compare it again on the next shooting.

Finally, I set my camera to settings to ISO 100, f14, shutter speed at 1/6sec with pop up flash. And these are the results I've got! Not perfect , but I feel satisfy for my first product shooting. No serious image editing, only cropping, adding text and white balance to 5500k.

Will try different items in the future. Perhaps something much bigger or something that reflects light, such as glasses. Anyway, feel free to comments.

Cheers!

Lu Ting Jieh

New Toys for product photography

Recently I get attracted to product photography and DIY photography equipments. Combining these two interests it become DIY product photography.

You can find a lot of video or articles from internet. There are DIY photography websites such as : http://www.diyphotography.net/ or http://news.deviantart.com/article/55003/ . Of course there are more website sharing their ideas and concepts. Beside that, people who upload their video on youtube do help a lot and it inspire me.

During this weekend, I get myself shopping around to see what I can get for my product photography accessories.

2 light bulbs - 5500k temperature color.
2 clips or light bulb holder.
2 sets of cables
2 Pringles
1 cotton made oil filter net

The light bulbs is a bit expensive for a DIY mission, but I got no choice. I can only find this temperature color from one shop. According to my research, 5500k temperature color will be the best for photography.

I had change the original socket and cables from the clips. It just looks bad and I don't dare to use it. The cable they used is just too thin and the plug don't really fit in. So I changed it with new cables and socket where I bought it separately from another hardware shop. And the Pringles will become the snoot and/or reflector. Finally, the oil filter net will become the diffuser. Hopefully it will give good result.

Well, I got everything done but not starting to shoot yet, because my house don't have a good place for me to set up everything. There are just too many housemate and I will not have any chance to have a dark room. So , I planned to bring everything over my office and do the shooting after office hour.

Cant wait to test all the equipment!!! Hopefully it brings good results.



Lu Ting Jieh