Product photography

I get lots of requests for help from people who run website or small Ebay Internet businesses. They basically want to know what equipment they need to get to do better product photography. There is a lot of competition. The big firms are able to afford to pay the prices asked by the most successful photographers. Smaller outfits try to find ways of conserving capital by doing work for themselves..

What is meant by product photography? Consumer magazines are full of photos ranging from large objects like cars, boats, houses, interior furnishings, electronic gadgets, power tools, gardening equipment, and on a smaller scale, phones, watches, clothes and bottles of perfume. There are many other categories that I've missed form this list. Trying to find one photographer who is a master at photographing all of these categories would be very difficult indeed. Photographers tend to specialise in a narrow range of activities for which they become known.

If you want to investigate whether its feasible to do some of your own photographic work I think its best to spend some time thinking about some very practical problems. Do you have enough space to devote to photographic work? Obviously its hard to generalise here but the man that sold signage for directing drivers around public car parks will need a lot bigger space than a man who sold antique Japanese swords. Space can be an expensive commodity if its underused.

Another type of customer has done some holiday photography and thinks skills can be acquired merely by spending a lot on the proper equipment. Sometimes, this may be true. I have a pen that is better than anything Shakespeare ever had but I still can't write as well. Equipment isn't everything. Throwing money at a problem isn't always going to make the skills of image building that were hard won from long years of study and experience. It is also true that technology can change radically (from analogue to digital) rendering past experience worthless almost overnight. Often salesmen have recommended photographic gear that isn't really suitable at all for the job they want to do with it. On one occasion that equipment was very good the user had changed his product range to such a degree that the soft light of fluorescent tubes wasn't incisive enough for the new products he was photographing. These were simply sheets of rough textured paper. Light tents from Ebay or trade fairs are bought enthusiastially to solve all sorts ofphotographic problems.They work okay for some very small objects though they are far from the answer to all simple photographic lighting problems.

Interior of David Turner's Stokenchurch studio where one -to -one photography courses are run

A better way to proceed would be to strengthen you knowledge base prior to investing a lot of cash in new equipment. Spend a day finding and doing practical work in the studio on one of my photographic courses. You will normally be the only student and can find out exactly what you need to know.

Getting a white background

You might think that a roll of white background paper might easily lead to  pictures where an object appears to float in a completely white space. Its not as easy to achieve as you might think.

Firstly, the background needs to be very even. This is usually achieved by purchasing a roll of background paper or vinyl sheeting. Either material needs carefully supporting to avoid creases in the surface. It should be completely free from marks on the surface as well. Not too difficult to achieve with a small camera back and a sheet of drawing paper. However, anyone whose tried to photograph a motor bike in the same way will know that trying to get a roll of studio paper to unwind smoothly and lie perfectly flat on the floor is a lot trickier. The roll of paper is often warped by leaning it at an angle in storage.You also have tyre marks, and foot marks made getting the bike on to the background in the first place. Often large objects like bikes, boats and items of furniture are too long for the width of the background. You end up with a picture like this:-

The missing corner on the left has to be added in Photoshop etc. People think that a wide angle lens will solve the problem. Usually they introduce too much distortion.

You have to divide the studio or background into two different light zones. The lights falling on the object or person should be adjusted to give the correct exposure. The lights projected on the the background (you can just see the background light in the top of this picture) should be set slightly higher to overexpose the whiteness of the background. It is this overexposure that creates the bright, detail free, background white.

Exposure should be checked with a flash meter with the background light set slightly higher to overexpose the white paper a little (about one stop) None of this light should fall on the object or person which needs to be correctly exposed to show its characteristics. In a small studio this is often difficult to do as the light tends to bounce around the place in unexpected ways. Note that in the illustration there is a gap of six feet between the background and the biker. This is to stop cast shadows falling on the background.

On a high quality large print it would be necessary to remove a lot of marks made when the bike was wheeled into place on the floor.These can just be seen on the first picture.

Common Photography Faults

Setting up your camera for beginners....


Ah! those tiresome old jokes about not forgetting to take the lens cap off! Here are few newer ways for improving things before you start work:-

1.CHARGE YOUR BATTERIES
Always recharge your batteries if you are taking your camera with you for a day out. There are few things more irritating than to have to stop work because the battery is flat. Extreme cold is bad for batteries. Keep your charged batteries warm in your coat pocket.

2.INSTALL CARDS
 Check that you have a card in the camera and some spare cards as well. Cards have got bigger and bigger over the years and the price has fallen considerably.You could be tempted to buy one very big card. Years ago, I worked for Kodak as a wedding photographer just as they were changing over to digital imaging. The standard advice was to shoot each wedding on about 4 different cards. Then if one was corrupted you still had three cards left of a unique event. The same is still true: I would never do a whole holiday on just one card especially if it would be difficult to repeat it.

3.SELECT A COLOUR TEMPERATURE
Try to set the correct colour balance for your camera. The colour of the light changes according to the light source and any filtration. If you start photographing a landscape in the morning the light is very blue. Later it might become cloudy. This will filter the sunlight behind the clouds making it slightly cold. In the evening the the light will turn orange as the sun sets. Indoors a room could be lit by a candle, tungsten bulb, or fluorescent light. Each is a different colour. Often a range of colours can be mixed together as with sunlight filtering into a room mixing with colours from television and a reading lamp. Dealing with this jumble of different types and colours of light  can be difficult for cameras. So its best to start off with the colour of light you believe to be nearest to correct. In the pictures below you can see the dramatic effects of natural lighting and red spotlights. Both pictures are truthful but in very different ways.

To adjust the light do the following.
Find the symbols that appear on the colour control panel on your camera.Select the most suitable symbol for the type of light that occurs. If everything is mixed light use the automatic light adjustment. More sophisticated cameras allow a custom light balance to get the setting right. Colour can be usually further refined by adjusting it in a photo editing programme.

5. SELECT A FILE TYPE
Modern cameras often allow a range of picture (file) sizes to be chosen. The size you choose heavily influences what you can easily use the pictures for after the event. If you choose small jpeg files you will get a lot of pictures on a card but they will only be suitable for email and phone pictures. If you want to make photographic prints from the pictures you need to make large files. The best quality files are Raw files usually available on better cameras. You would have to acquire some knowledge of photography to process these.

6. CHOOSE AN ISO NUMBER
ISO is an index of the speed that the chip in your camera responds to light. A high ISO number gives a fast response at the expense of some degradation in the quality of the images. In strong daylight you would use about 400 ISO. For the smoothest images always set your camera as low as you can, usually 100 ISO. Outside, on a changeable day, I would use 400 ISO, or 100 IS0 in strong sunshine. I would probably use this setting for indoor pictures supported by a flash gun.
For pictures taken at night use a very high ISO index number(6400 ISO)because the level of light is very low. At this ISO level the quality of the image begins to degrade. Noise (random wrongly coloured pixels) can be seen in big enlargements. This can be minimised in image processing programs.

• 100 ISO Normal setting. Sunny day outside.
• 400 ISO  Overcast days outside. Well lit interiors
• 1000 ISO Very dull day, Under trees in deep shade.
• 6400 ISO  Twilight. Well lit streets at night. You might need a tripod for some subjects.

7. BATTERY CONSERVATION
Switching your camera off and on continually depletes the battery quite quickly. If better to leave it switched on and let the battery conservation system temporarily switch off.

8. PROTECT YOUR CAMERA.
Keep your camera in a decent bag that will protect it if it is dropped. Lots of photographers protect the lens by fitting a screw in UV filter. This makes very little difference to the to the images visually and can be cheaply replaced if scratched.
Do not leave it in the sun for a long period of time.

Make all of the above checks before you start each shooting session. Although photos can now be modified considerably after they are taken it can be complex and skilled work to do well. Get it right in the camera!
I've forgotten to do most of the above at sometime or other. Try to find a quiet space to check your camera over before a shoot.

Photographing white paper.

Photographing white paper.

I get a number of interesting requests for help with photo projects that grow out of the one day short courses that I run in my studio.(www.david-turner-photography.co.uk ) Many of my customers run small Internet businesses of one form or another. This problem came from a man who was well informed about the technical aspects of photography and had set up a website to sell high quality sheets of paper suitable for use by artists, craft workers and designers. I think he must have been using some form of template website that allowed only small samples to be shown in his website shop.
The problem was that a sheet of white paper, irrespective of its high quality and hand made attributes, doesn't look very exciting as a small square on a website. Grey paper, looks even worse.
Like most of my customers he had a selection of bits of lighting equipment acquired over the years that he was trying to use. Some of the equipment he had been sold wasn't very suitable for the job it had to do.They were fluorescent light bulbs of the coiled type.These can be successfully used on static subject matter where a very soft light is needed.
The problem was that a hard light was needed to bring out the texture on the art paper surface.Usually people have problems creating soft lighting. This one was the other way round. If there is a moral to this storey it should be that good information is best obtained before you buy equipment. It is equally true to say that situations change over time and one bit of gear cannot solve all of your problems.

Planning studio lighting effects. Hat shoot

 You might think that photographing a few hats was a simple problem. To get the results shown here two very separate lighting systems were involved. The studio was divided  into background light and lighting to show the qualities of the hats.
Lighting kits for studio work usually come with a few different ways of controlling the spread of the light umbrellas, soft boxes, snoots etc. To get the best out of each subject its important the the light shading is carefully matched to the qualities of the objects being photographed. In this particular case all of the hats had a wide range of surface textures plus  the model's hair and complexion. Rather than opting for large umbrellas or solftboxes that render a smoothing effect on the lighted subject I chose to use a range of honeycomb filters fitted over the lights on the model.

 A honeycomb grid looks exactly like it sounds: is a filter made with hexagonal tubes placed over the flash unit. The tubes or cells are available in a number of different sizes that control the spread of the light. Honeycombs were originally marketed as an economical substitute for a focusing spot light. They have one quality that makes them useful for this type of work. The edge line with a spot is always focused and hard whereas the edge rendered by a honeycomb tends to be soft.  The size of the light patch is also fairly easy to control. The slightly harsher light brings out the texture in the hat surfaces. In all of the pictures shown three honeycomb grids were used. The first was a large size grid over the front of a small soft box casting an overall soft light on the model. This was placed at about 45 degrees above the model and established the overall lighting of the picture. To this I added another two flash units both fitted with honeycombs to highlight certain aspects of each hat. Below I've shown a closeup to give a better indication of of what the prints really look like. The real beauty of the textiles used can be appreciated from the A4 prints made from file.
Thanks to Felicity Hat Hire of Beaconsfield and (www.felicity.co.uk) for supplying the hats and to Paris De Reuck for modeling them.

Portrait shoots

Portrait shoots

    * Spacious well equipped studio

    * Latest digital equipment. See your pictures appear as they are shot!

    * Unique background colour system

    * No queueing!

    * Digital upload of your photos included free.

    * Fully retouched print included in the shoot price worth £25

    * Lifestyle shoots

    * Each shoot lasts up to three hours.

    * All types of shoot catered for.

A huge range of people come to our Stokenchurch Studio for portrait sessions . Here is a list of recent activities: Birthdays,18+ parties, mother and babies, children, college alumni, friends, pictures for websites, work portraits, musicians, dancers, actors, people with their pets, family groups, partnerships, couples, model portfolios, lifestyle shoots, workshops, industrial clothing, dance groups etc.

Common to all is the need to get a powerful image of themselves. Studio photography can be  a new experience for some of my clients. The key thing is to get organized in advance. Please phone me well before the shoot to discuss what you want to do in your shoot, what the images are going to be used for, and what kind of props you might need. You might want to tear a collection of pictures from magazines to bring with you as rough examples of the sort of thing you want to do. There is plenty of space to store clothes for your shoot. You cannot bring too much with you for the shoot. You will be the a star for the day. All of the pictures are from one shoot with a  model new to studio work.

Make up and props may be important for your image. Clients have come with Harley-Davidson motorbikes, guitars, saxophones, their much loved dog, snakes, bunches of flowers, dreary clothes worn by actors for a part in a play, little black dresses, ball and party wear etc. Other clients have wanted much more formal clothes as their picture was destined to go an an office wall or website imparting a lot of information. What you need to bring depends on what sort of image you need us to create.

A portrait shoot is a real red letter day that you will not forget in a hurry. This is why many of the Studio Portrait Shoots are bought a gifts using our gift voucher system. The giver pays for the shoot and the free print. If the recipient wants additional pictures they pay for the extra prints. (see Gift Vouchers on my website www.david-turner-photography.co.uk)



  

Using studio flash. 1

Studio Flash Lighting 1.
General Information.

Over the last few years many amateur photographers have been tempted to buy studio lighting kits to use for mainly indoor work. A large number of brands have appeared from the far east to compete with the more established English, American, and Swiss brands. Anyone looking for a dealer could consult my friend Graham at his website www.gwdigitalandphoto.com for sales advice on what is needed. For beginners its often advantageous to buy a kit that includes some of the very necessary accessories like stands and reflectors etc. You will also need a flash meter.

 Lets assume that  you have acquired a set of studio lights. Most of the products on the market  have the following features:-

1   A modeling light that works in tandem with the flash tube. These can be adjusted from zero up to about 5 stops of light (depending on the particular unit)  The function of the modeling bulb is to mimic the effect of the flash when it occurs. Effectively, all of the light aiming is done with the modeling light and the exposure with the flash tube, so an important criteria in designing the unit is to make the spread and distribution of the two types of light as similar as possible. Cheap brands might not be very good in this respect.

2   There is the odd occasion when it would be desirable to shoot with flash and not have the modeling light switched on, so a switch is usually built in to facilitate this.

3  The strength or power of the flash is adjustable. This is indicated digitally on most modern lights. They are easier to see in a dim studio but no more efficient than the dial type adjusters they have superseded.
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4  When looking through a camera lens it is difficult to see if all of the flash units have worked so most have either an audible or visual signal, or both, to indicate that each particular unit has fired. On some units the modeling bulb dims after the flash has fired. I prefer the audible signals peeping around the studio in complex shots though it is largely a matter of what you are used to.

5  All of the lights have to be synchronized with the shutter to work at exactly the same moment to give correct exposure. This is achieved by one flash unit being in sync with the camera hot shoe or sync plug. Slave receptors built into the other units then cause them to fire as the camera shutter is opened. They work by UV light. There is also usually a jack plug socket for additional slaves to be used if necessary. Wireless connections are more reliable as the signal is less directional  than UV light. It is also possible to link units together with a wire. An old fashioned method that wasn't very reliable.

6.  Flash units are attached to lighting stands with a standard spigot usually supplied with the stand rather than the light unit.

7.  If they are to be transported in a car a substantial case is needed.

8.  Flash units are powered by capacitors that are quite powerful enough to give you a fatal electric shock. There should be a dump button to allow you to discharge the flash power down the earth cable.

9.   The cost of the flash tube is about half of the complete unit and it is very fragile. Retain the plastic or metal caps used in transit to protect your flash unit
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10.  Lights on tall stands are very unstable things. Toddlers,cats, and adults have all managed to knock mine over so I weight the base with gravel filled canvas bags. These are homemade.

In order to measure the light you will also need a special form of light meter called a flash meter.  Flash meters are able to measure sudden pulses of light and to trigger the flash units to enable the light emitted by sepate units at different strengths to be measured collectively. (See my other blog on Lighting Ratios.)

Soft box over object.

Lets start off with simple lighting of a small stationary object. Just use one light and some basic equipment such as a small soft box. As you can see from the photograph the light is suspended over a table nearly horizontally . ( It is tilted down at the front a little to cast light on the front elevation of the object.) A sheet of black card is attached to the back of the soft box. This has the effect of shading the light from the background. Depending on how deep the card is alters the amount of cast light bouncing off the background surface. The illustrations below show the card at is maximum size, then folded in half and then removed altogether.

In this picture the contrast is at its maximum rendering the background black at the top and then becoming white at the front.

Now the sheet hanging down from the soft box has been folded in half along its length allowing more light to spill on to the background sheet, reducing the contrast to mid gray.

The sheet has now been removed completely .

A simple sheet of paper can make a lot of difference in the lighting effect.
The big problem for most beginners with limited space and equipment is to support the soft box over the light table. This was done with a boom arm fixed to a substantial lighting stand. The stand was weighted at the base with gravel filled bags. A light weight stand might have tipped over if it was cantilevered too far.

Flash meters.
In order to measure the strength of the light its necessary to have a special type of light meter called a flash meter. Almost all of the flash meters on the market are also conventional light meters very similar to the ones built into most cameras. Built in camera light meters are unsuitable for measuring very short intense bursts of light emitted by the flash units. When used as a separate piece of equipment the flash meter can be pointed at the light source from position of the object or person being photographed.  It measures the light falling on the object or person.This is called incident rather than reflected light metering as the meter measures the light from the subject position.

Where a number of lights are being used a flash meter can be pointed at each light  in turn to evaluate its power in relation to the other flash units. In this particular case things are very simple as there is only one light.  The meter is placed close to the subject (the paper dog) and aimed at the camera lens. The invercone is extended to add light bouncing around the subject and a measurement made of the flash. The camera is set to this amount of exposure.
Flash meters vary a lot in their sophistication. I prefer one that is also a conventional light meter as well as this can be used in other types of photography to check camera light readings. Cameras tend to come and go but many professional photographers stay loyal to their trusted meter as it is an independent measure of exposure.