Product Photography In Preston Lancashire

Product Photography In Preston Lancashire

SetGear are a company based in Penwortham in Preston, creating production equipment engineered for film & TV. Their brief was very straightforward. “Nice clean images, that show what we do, and the quality of our work”. Well, there was no doubting the quality of craftsmanship, and I wanted to ensure it was clearly evident in the images. These were to be typical “e-commerce” images, on white, although I wanted to retain the shadow for a three dimensional feel to the image.

It was placed on white paper, although it would still be “cut out” in post. I just wanted to ensure I didn’t get any colour contamination from any support. My keylight is an ELB500 firing through a Phottix Raja 105 without a honeycomb and firing at an output of 3.0 (Equivalent to 50Ws). It was placed high frame left to give an overall fill to the frame.

I placed a second ELB500 frame right, firing through a 40° gridded standard reflector, at an output of 0.1 (Equivalent to 7Ws). This created the shadow I wanted and highlighting the wood grain quite nicely.

Olympus E-M1 mkII 1/250th sec ISO200 12-40mm f2.8 @ f11

And what is it used for?

Possibly one of the most important bit of kit on a film set, to be honest.
The second image was shot with the same settings and lighting setup, although it caused a double shadow from both lights. The giveaway is the shadows of the cups from the accent light can be seen going towards frame left, and the board shadow from the key light is immediately below it. I simply removed the keylight shadow in post, as it had also become rather long with the board being elevated, and was rather distracting.

I had also opened the aperture by 1/3rd of a stop to f10, as I had noticed the previous image had a slight drop off to the rear.

Olympus E-M1 mkII 1/250th sec ISO200 12-40mm f2.8 @ f10

This was a similar lighting setup and the settings were the same for the lights and camera.

And with the item assembled. You can see what I was talking about regarding the long shadows on the second cup holder image. Here, it’s not so bad, as there aren’t the issue of second shadows.

And this is what it’s used for. Yes,that’s one of my cameras, as there wasn’t a cine camera available at the time of doing the shoot.

A little more of a challenge with this one. We wanted to show the shape and complexity of the item, along with the texture. The accent light remained at the same position and settings, helping to provide contrast for the texture of the grain, as well as the shadow. The keylight is raised a little, so as to cover the height of the item, and pointed towards the centre for an even coverage. The block frame left was allowed to go a little darker so as to give the whole image depth.

Output from the lights is the same, as is the camera. Although I think I must have caught the command dial, as the ISO has shifted from 200 to 250 for some reason. And this is the only image at ISO250.

Olympus E-M1 mkII 1/250th sec ISO250 12-40mm f2.8 @ f10

So, this is part of a “Stack Box”, allowing the height to be adjusted by adding more boxes. We decided it would be worth shooting each section individually, and then in combination. This would allow me to create a gif for their website which would be self explanatory as to its use.

The lighting was still the same ELB500s with the same modifiers and power output settings, although I raised the key light to take into account the proposed increase in height with the addition of the other boxes. The keylight was also moved marginally higher and further back f or the same reasons.

To compensate for the slight reduction in light caused by the light sources being moved further away, I opened up the aperture by a third of a stop to f9.

Olympus E-M1 mkII 1/250th sec ISO200 12-40mm f2.8 @ f9