This week’s Straight-out-of-Camera project theme was Porcelain/Ceramic. At first, I thought about doing something with an old set of ceramic brake pads, but then I saw the Bailey’s mug. I figured this would be a good opportunity for me to work on my product photography. The set-up was fast and rough, and there’s a few other things that I think I’d do differently if I’d taken the time to get all of the lighting gear out. Such is the problem of not having a dedicated studio space here at the house. I need to fix that.
Camera Nikon D90
Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/2.8
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 200
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash On, Return not detected
Lens 50.0 mm f/1.8
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Nicely done, sir! I like how the light on the cup makes it appear as if there is a tear falling from its eye.
Nice burlap coffee bean sack! Overall it looks good but is missing something. I’m not sure what though, depth maybe?
Chris, I thought about putting some super hot coffee in the mug and trying to capture some of the steam rising out of the cup. That might have added the additional element that would make this a bit more dynamic.
I actually tried to capture that this morning when I shot mine. Didn’t go so well. It could be that the background was all white in this kitchen in the apartment, so there was really no contrast for it to show up.
Great shot. Love the vivid colors you got from bottle and the cup.. Really cute little cup.. I want one…. Great work on the arrangement coffee and mint Baileys goes like breed and butter or strawberries and cream.. Yeah just yummy.. Now I want some Mint Baileys and coffee… and I got no Baileys.. Damn you Doug 😉
The only complaint is you used a square softbox when shooting a bottle. You need to use a long narrow softbox or have a huge diffuser to avoid the square flash highlight on the bottle. Use a big diffuser close to the bottle this way you get a nice highlight along the entire bottle =) Just a tip on dealing with glass and bottles.
Yeah, I just used a little slip-on softbox on my speedlight. I should have used my larger strobe softbox and that would have eased some of the background shadows as well.
Yeah I kinda figured from the flash reflection it was a smaller softbox. They are very convenient for sure but for shiny objects they tend to fall a bit short unfortunately.
Or, just bounce it off of the ceiling, so you don’t get the direct flash back off of the cup. Then, the whole ceiling becomes your softbox.
Problem with product photography is your dealing with small items so light coming down from above don’t work very good. It’s fine for something big like a human face. But if you look at bottles in ads etc you will see a highlight that goes along the entire length of the bottle only way to get that is by a tall sidelight, if the main light comes from above you get a “ring” on the top of the bottle. Bottles actually are really tricky to photograph and a bit of art and a lot of magic. Any shiny object can be very tricky to be honest not just a bottle.
You’ve done a good Job with this Doug, Plenty of interest in the image, and the cup is very interesting in itself. I think maybe portrait orientation might have worked well and shown more of the bottle, but I suppose the it’s the cup that’s the focus of the image. as far as lighting goes, I made a DIY strip softbox from an old box and some tinfoil with a cotton diffuser Cheap, easy, fits on a speedlight and disposable. 🙂