So a prospective client called our office today asking how much we would charge to do some product shots for her cafe. Pictures of just a few random items; coffee bags, coffee mugs, poetry book, old bearded man, typical things you find in a cafe. Anyways, my boss turns to me and says, you can do product photography right? And I assertively reply, "OF COURSE I CAN, I WENT TO FULL SAIL", (minus the Full Sail part). Then I start to think, I don't know how to do real product shots, I better figure this out! So long story longer, I did some quick research, and found a picture of a sweet little contraption that is basically the poor mans product shot set-up.
Here is a picture of my set up.
If you already have lights and a camera, then the set-up should only cost like $2, for reals. Its a box, with holes cut in it, white t-shirt stretched over the holes, and then some poster board laid down on the inside, and BOOM, super diffused lighting set-up. Here are some shots I took as soon as I finished making it (which took a while cuz i'm retarded with craft type things).
In these pictures I'm using two standard work lights that you can buy from home depot, and one little 800W photography light that my boss owns. I was gonna use a 500W photo light instead of the work lights, but I broke the bulb.
- Always urinate before you begin the build. Having to pee right when you get into it is a major flow killer (pun intended!)
- The box is designed so that you can light from above also, it would have been nice to have a boom stand of some sort to see what kind of results I could have gotten with overhead light.
-Have extra posterboard around. As you can see in some of the pics, it gets scuffed very easily/quickly.
-Make two light boxes. One for short long objects, and another for skinny tall objects (Or use a refrigerator box and make HUGE super duper light box)
-Don't break light bulbs, I was bummed that I couldn't throw more light at the box, especially on the fill side.
-When you do your first test shots, shoot something that isn't BLACK, i should of shot something with bright colors just to see how it would look.
So what do you guys think?
Man, shots look great dude. I love how easy something like that can be if you just go looking. I love the use of posterboard on the bottom for the nice sheen and a bit of reflection. It would probably be a great reflective source when lighting from above.
ReplyDeleteWhy couldn't they have made use build something like this in lighting class? I remember the day we were doing product shoots, and they were like...yeah just do it somehow. They could have given us a set of materials like this and had us build one of these. They then could have shown us different lighting set ups around a box like this, for different looks....maybe I am like crazy or something...seems so simple.
Looks great man...I would love to see some more photos.
Dude.. AWESOME!
ReplyDeleteThat looks sweet... and I agree w/ Dan about the FS stuff...
Chad you rock!
looks great dude! sorry my post it's a more in-depth critique. but good job.
ReplyDeleteReally nice shots man!
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