Product Photography

With the autumn coming in the UK, it is starting to get cold and wet.  With some time on my hands, I tried some product photography at home.  What better than photographing my photographic equipment?  This is my attempt at product photography and it proved much more difficult than I first thought.  My early attempts were just not good enough with harsh lighting and burnt out reflections.  I had to experiment a little before the images came out in my vision.

The first photo here is all my Olympus micro four third gears.  They were lit with a Nikon SB26 with a shoot through umbrella left of camera with a large white reflector on the right.  I shot it on my wooden floor to add texture to the image.  Post processing using Capture One involved reducing saturation, increasing contrast and adding -2EV vignette around the frame.  I quite like the outcome.

I also shot a couple of my Canon lenses using very similar lighting.  This time, instead of using a reflector, I had a gridded Canon 540EZ on the right to fill in shadow.  Using my Olympus 45mm F1.8 on my E-PM1 to reduce the DOF, I was able to blur out the background quite well.  These are the results.

Canon 17-40mm F4 L USM

Canon 24-105mm F4 L IS USM

What have I learnt?  The objects you photograph must be immaculately cleaned before the shoot.  Looking at my photo at 100% will show up so much dirt and dust, it is unbelievable!  I am looking to experiment with product photography more this winter when I am not shooting portraits outdoor.  These are nice images, but they are hardly creative.  How to make the images stand out?  That is what I will try to work on.