Yowie product shot experiment
I just bought and put together my first Yowie, thread here if anyone's interested. Yowie thread
I've been reading a lot about light tents for product photography and decided to do a quick and easy inexpensive experiment. Because my area was dark, I put a piece of 8.5 x 11 Mead Multi-Purpose Ultra Bright White Paper on my desk and curved it to lean against the desk top halogen lamp.
I then put my camera on the desk, set it for macro, put the Yowie in a good position, turned on the light (straight overhead) and took a shot. I then bridged a second piece of paper over some pens in a cup on each side about 7 inches over the Yowie. I then took another shot. Then I removed the paper and balanced some plastic that was used for packaging. Here's a composite of all three photos.
It makes a vast difference in the shadow -- you can tell the paper difference right away, for the other two, look at the shadow under the tail.
Although my camera wasn't white balanced and the photos appeared quite yellow and on the dark side, using levels and clicking on the paper for the white point and the black eye of the Yowie Old Wife Fish brought the color right into a good result. To match the color of the no paper and plastic images, I lightened the midtones a little.
Next, I'll try two side lights, but those have a different light (daylight balanced). Then I want to try something shiny... Hope this helps anyone who suddenly gets a request for product shots that are tabletop tiny.
I've been reading a lot about light tents for product photography and decided to do a quick and easy inexpensive experiment. Because my area was dark, I put a piece of 8.5 x 11 Mead Multi-Purpose Ultra Bright White Paper on my desk and curved it to lean against the desk top halogen lamp.
I then put my camera on the desk, set it for macro, put the Yowie in a good position, turned on the light (straight overhead) and took a shot. I then bridged a second piece of paper over some pens in a cup on each side about 7 inches over the Yowie. I then took another shot. Then I removed the paper and balanced some plastic that was used for packaging. Here's a composite of all three photos.
It makes a vast difference in the shadow -- you can tell the paper difference right away, for the other two, look at the shadow under the tail.
Although my camera wasn't white balanced and the photos appeared quite yellow and on the dark side, using levels and clicking on the paper for the white point and the black eye of the Yowie Old Wife Fish brought the color right into a good result. To match the color of the no paper and plastic images, I lightened the midtones a little.
Next, I'll try two side lights, but those have a different light (daylight balanced). Then I want to try something shiny... Hope this helps anyone who suddenly gets a request for product shots that are tabletop tiny.
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Hi Dee, I read your comment at Ziggy's thread. I really have to find some time to shoot my products.
www.adrian.smugmug.com
I was hoping you'd find this post! Some of those links of Ziggy's are amazing and I've turned them all into PDFs, there was one site that even had very good tutorials on different types of product photography, jewelry, glassware (another really tough product shot), food... I spent the morning checking some of them out instead of cleaning up my office!
I just heard from this lady that I will get to shoot her products for her website, as well as be her tutor with her digital camera. My suspicion is that she may well discover it's easier to let me do the photography and photoshop work than her doing it herself, especially when she could be making more products. Since we are both cash poor, she was thrilled when I said we could barter some of the photography fee.
I was amazed with just an overhead halogen desk lamp and some ordinary paper I could get such different shadows...
Dee
http://www.twitter.com/deegolden