One of my favorite media servers is the Vortexbox which not only streams music and video for you, it also automatically rips CD’s just by sticking them into the drive. When Andrew asked me to shoot the new server line I jumped at the chance. Here are two versions of the shots I put together for him.
I do really like doing product shots as they are never late, don’t cry, don’t have mothers trying to run the show, etc. As much as I like shooting weddings, I still like going back to my product roots and putting together a shoot for a client. In this case Powermax is launching a new line of AC Delco flashlights and worked with me on their product images. There was a few dozen in all, but these are a few of my favorite ones.
If you didn’t know already, I got started in photography by doing product shoots and I still love doing it. Products don’t move, they aren’t late, they don’t get emotional, drunk, or have meltdowns. This week I took some photos of some D-Link equipment for some video tutorials that will appear soon. This is my favorite shot.
To get this shot (all done in-camera), the product is sitting on 1/4″ thick plexiglass on top of white muslin. In the background, about three feet behind the product is white seamless paper. The large TD5 lights come in about about 45 degree angles to each side and above while the smaller TD3 was closer in to provide some specularity. The image was processed using the public beta of Adobe Lightroom 3.0.
Equipment Used
(2) Westcott SpiderLite TD-5′s
(1) Westcott SpiderLite TD-3
Canon EOS 50D
Adobe Lightroom 3.0 Beta
Today I needed to shoot some Digium interface cards for 888VoipStore.com. The challenge was that I wanted to get a vertical shot with a reflection underneath. The reflection was simple, just shoot the product over a sheet of thick plexiglass that is sitting on top of a sheet of white muslin. Getting the card to “stand up” required a little bit of thought. At first I tried some acrylic blocks but that stood out too much and would require more Photoshop work than I wanted to do. The same thing happened with white blocks. The final solution turned out to be super simple. I used a boom arm and suspended the cards using fishing line. With the strobes going off the fishing line just disappeared making touch-ups for real fast.
READ MORE »
The snom MeetingPoint is a new conference room phone from snom. With a slick design and top-notch features, we decided to go for a shot that made the phone look at home on a conference room table. Not having a conference table in my house, our dining room table would have to suffice.
For those of you who want to see the setup it was actually a pretty simple layout. With a single Westcott Spiderlite TD5 providing the key light and two reflectors providing fill light I got a nice even illumination with enough forward direction light to give add to the depth and dimension.
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 50mm f/1.8
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 50mm
Aperture: f/11
Shutter: 1/13th
While product photography may not be as glamorous or fun as shooting weddings or engagements, I still enjoy doing it and it is the bulk of my daily work. There is quite a challenge in getting lighting and exposure dialed in that I really get a kick out of. Here are some shots I did today for http://VoipStore.com.
We just got in the new Photo Basics StrobeLites to start checking out for an upcoming review that will appear soon on Camera Dojo. So far these monolights seem to be the perfect combination of features and price point. At around $650 for a three light system, this puts high quality lighting into the hands of almost anyone that can afford a DSLR. Also included is a floor mat to help with light placement and an instructional DVD. Here are a few shots that are of the lights themselves and were also lit with the lights.
I actually got my start doing product photography and still enjoy doing it whenever possible, I actually still do quite a lot and was one of the main reasons for building a home studio. This weekend I got in a small project for VOIPSpeak to shoot a new wireless phone. Nothing overly special but I like letting people know I still enjoy product photography.
After the last shoot for Fonality, we were asked again to do another product shot for a product manual. This time they didn’t want them with an “artsy” look, they wanted high quality images with a very normal look with all of the products being lit exactly the same and shot at a very low angle. This was a major rush job but after pulling a light night we got it delivered on-time.
The new trixbox appliance is now available and they needed some new pictures right away so it was off to the studio to get some quick shots. Over the weekend I will be doing some more along with some phones that they needed new shots of.
