The New Tabletop Studio!

Well allot of time has been going to a new client Dan Odulo that contracted me to do product photography for his small business called Flashing Panda that sell the most neatest LED products for practical and festive events!. Now this is not common to me. Most of the stuff I do again is random, out in the field, not something that is to be uniform and consistent like product photography. That by far is the hardest thing about doing product shots, it is hard to make it a consistent shots to present to the client, but as a photographer, I do what I can!

To do product photography the simpliest way to get it done is to use a Light Box or a Light Tent. This give you really consistent results. However being a strobist, my set up is using hot shoe bassed flashes! VERY difficult to work with. The easiest most pain free way to do this is a Light Table with big soft boxes using constant light sources ligh a lamp. This way, if you have a tripod, you aim the lights on the product on top of the table, and light up the bottom of your product under the table, place your camera on a tripod, set up the setting and like an assembly line you churn out one after another of product photos. AMAZING ISNT IT?! Not in my case. I am still honeing my technique but so far the shots are turning out quite neet so far so I must show you my progress!

Remember this picture in the teaser entry to these mass blogs? It this is some of the pieces that I used to make a new rig to do product photography! What is new is some clamps, and a backdrop bar! I did not go for the retail bars you find in photography stores because, c'mon, I'm a starving college student! I must pinch pennies where I can most of the time! Instead I went to my local HomeDepot and purchased a 10 foot piece of galvanized pipe! Now I could use the whole darn thing, but most of this strobe work is for small LED tools and novelty items, so I cut it down to 5ft and purchased a 4 foot roll of white stemless paper to slip over it! Affixed onto my light stands with two Bogen Super clamps onto my 11ft Bogen 3337 light stands, I not have a backdrop! Teamed up with my Manfrotto Nano stands, Nikon Speedlights,60" umbrellas for soft light, and Cybersyncs, I now have a capable desktop studio!

Looks spiffy huh? Its really simple for now. After setting it up, I took a picture of my Canon 580ex to see what it was capable of. Now when you look at this picture, the background could be a little bit brighter or even blown out but that will be next in my series of photographs!

 

1/50 f5.6 ISO400

This shot could be done with much lower ISO, but I had to start somewhere, and I personally didn't want to start will full power pops from my flashes. So far the quality from my 7D is good enough. Some pixel peepers will beg to differ, but in the end the shot is good enough for web use. The strobes are set at 45 degree angles to the left and right of the item looking down. You can easily aim your lights if you are using an umbrella on your units because you can use the shaft as a pointer to aim the light source. If you use soft boxes, just aim it at your product, take a test shot and see what is the result and modify till you are satisfied to start the assembly line of product photography. Shots I believe were taken at 1/8th power from the Nikon SB-28's. Next will be to shoot them at 1/2 power and lower the ISO for final shots.

More updates on my product table will come soon! Stay tunned everyone! If you have any question leave a comment!