Three Bottles of Campari on a Seamless White Background

Nikon D300s, Nikkor AF-S 85mm f/1.8 G, f/11.0, 1/160s, ISO 200, 1x Elinchrom D-Lite-it 2, 2x  Elinchrom D-Lite-it 4, 1x Large Sheet of White Cardstock, 2x Long Narrow Strips of Black Cardstock on each side of product, 1x Sheet of Clear Glass.

Campari on Ice - another three light product photograph

Same basic lighting set-up as the photograph in the previous post.

Four Light Product Photo of Baileys' Liqueur

A (reasonably) simple three light product shot of a bottle of Baileys' Liqueur. But how to set up the lights to get this effect? Answer below the photograph of the very yummy Baileys'.

The rim highlight you see on the edge of the bottle is from two strip lights behind the subject, one on either side and about 10" out from each side.

Slow Shutter Speeds with Studio Flash for Ambient Colour and Mood

By combining a slow shutter speed and studio flash I was able to get the nice warm ambient glow of the candle falling on the scene as well as the lighting effect of the studio lights. The shutter speed was a very leisurely 4.0 seconds and the Elinchrom flashes fired at the beginning of the exposure. The Elinchroms are providing light on the label of the olive oil bottle (snoot), some fill and highlights (softboxes).

At a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second the mood and warmth is completely lost:

Doesn't really work for me the way the first one does...

And lastly, a slow shutter speed shot with all the studio lights switched off:

Olympus Trip 35 Hero Shot

I haven't been able to use my Olympus Trip 35 for over a year now just simply because I cannot find anywhere in Southern Sweden to process film. If anybody knows of a good lab please let me know, I really miss shooting my Trip... but at least I can shoot pictures of my Trip!

Here is a typical camera "hero" shot of my beautiful Olympus Trip 35 complete with authentic period Olympus Pen flash attached. The flash has a few small bits missing but that's ok, the pic looks great with it on. ;-)

Tahdah!

Oooooh! Aaaah! *Spontaneous applause*

"Why thank you, thank you very much!"

Five Bottles of Wine - on Black

With studio lighting anything you imagine is possible. Best investment I ever made!

Some good advice, if you want to improve your photography then another camera, or some other lens is not going to do it. Rather invest time in learning how to light your subject better, I guarantee that will have a major impact on the quality of your photos, much more than another high priced f2.8 zoom ever will. The temptation is always to get that new specced dslr with the more megapixels and higher frame rate, or that new VR version of the same lens you already have, but unless you change the way you light you are wasting your money. Next time you have bucks to blow, go get a speedlight instead, or a nice softbox, wireless triggers, light stands, umbrellas, heck just about anything but yet another camera body. Be strong, resist GAS, you can do it! ;-)

Mmmmm, beer! - Lighting is in Layers.

I like to think of setting up lighting as adding a series of carefully thought out layers. I normally start out with a background, work out the lighting for it and then slowly add layers until I match the vision I had in my minds eye for the particular subject.

Here is a final shot of a glass of beer and the can and then I will show the various "layers" of light as I added them in my quest for this photograph:

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:

How to Enlarge Your Lightsource for Softer Light, easily.

I did a little experiment this evening just to demonstrate how to make a really large lightsource and give much more even light on your subject than just blasting away with direct light.

I have two 65x65cm light boxes that are quite handy. So here is a pic of them set up pointing directly at a nice Dutch vase. The camera was on the tripod in front of the table.

From here it looks like that should make for some pretty good light on the vase, but as we can see in the next photo they also leave some not so great specular highlights on the vase and two distinct shadow areas behind the vase.

Not a bad photograph as such, but we can do much better than that! So, in order to increase the overall size of the light source I simply faced the lights up at the ceiling. Of course I also had to increase the power output of the lights because the light now had much further to travel and the inverse square law robs us of light very quickly when we increase the distance the light has to travel.

As you can see from the pic above the light has now been spread over a much larger area. So what has that done for our lovely Dutch vase?

Well the first thing you notice is that the ugly specular highlights have vanished and the light is much more evenly spread on the vase itself. The second thing is that the shadows behind the vase have also disappeared. Overall a much more pleasing result!

If all you have are two speedlights instead of the bigger studio lights then don't be disheartened because the exact same principle still holds true and will work just great. Simply pump up the power a bit and let 'er rip, it will have a similar wonderful softening effect on the quality of light.

Happy product photographing folks!

A (fairly) Standard Three Light Portrait

Three Elinchrom lights used. Main light camera left Elinchrom 4 bounced into a black backed umbrella from about 45° up and 45° to the subject. Fill light camera right Elinchrom 4 about 1 stop down from main shot through a transparent umbrella. Back light Elinchrom 2 right and behind subject in a medium sized softbox. Nikon D300s and Nikkor 50mm f1.8D.

All this and another light, light stands, plus a background stand, backdrop, two cameras complete with lenses, plus a tripod all fit into one large rolling case to become my highly portable studio ready to leave and shoot on location at any time. Very convenient indeed!

Putting my Light Tent and Elinchrom lights to Good Use

For the last couple of years I have been buying up beer mugs in second hand stores, and it was all started by my daughter who purchased this mug for me at a boot sale:

It turned out to be pre German unification, so it has a little age to it as well. Since then I have added to my collection and below you can find a few of them. I used my light tent with black board inside for the seamless background, an Elinchrom D-Lite-it 2 with 65x65 softbox and Nikon D300s with Nikon 40mm f/2.8 DX G AF-S attached. All manual settings for consistency from shot to shot. Post processed with DXO Optics Pro 8.

 

Another - Single Elinchrom Softbox Portrait

From the same session as the portrait below.

Single Elinchrom Softbox Portrait

More often than not one light is all that is needed.

Portrait with the Nikkor 50mm f1.8D

Have I mentioned before that the Nikkor 50mm f1.8D makes a really nice portrait lens? ;-) Hehe!

Lighting: Elinchrom D-Lite-it 2 with a snoot from above and behind the subject pointing down at the subject from the right side of the portrait. Elinchrom D-lite-it 4 with 65x65cm soft-box from above camera and very slightly left. Edited in Lightroom 4. Vignette added.

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.

Portrait of Ben (with Attitude)

Elinchrom D-Lite-it 4 snooted and shot from behind and right of the subject to give a little hair light action, Elinchrom D-Lite-it 4 through a smallish softbox aimed to just skim across the subject from camera left without throwing too much light onto the background, edited in Lightroom 4.3 to grunge the portrait up a bit. I used my favourite 50mm f1.8D attached to a Nikon D300s, with all manual settings applied.

One Bottle of Wine, One Light Tent and Two Elinchrom D-lite-it 4's.

A very simple set-up to photograph the bottle of Pomerol wine shown above:

Agfa Isolette

I originally posted a little about this camera here: Girl with Agfa Isolette, but this time around I just got a better pic of the camera. More about it at the Camerapedia website, simply CLICK HERE.

Some time or the other I need to get all the ingredients to develop my own film and then I may have a stab at actually using it.

Nikon D300s, Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G AF-S DX Micro, 80x80cm light tent, 2xElinchrom D-Lite-it 4's shot through their softboxes on either side of the tent.