Wireless Techniques for ProductsWelcome| 00:00 | Hi! I am Photographer Jim Sugar.
| | 00:04 | Thanks for joining me in this
look at Wireless Flash in action.
| | 00:08 | I've been a working photographer for
many years, and I've seen photographic
| | 00:12 | technology evolve in a lot of different ways.
| | 00:15 | For me, one of the most significant
developments deals with lighting.
| | 00:19 | Shooting with artificial lights used to
mean in carrying a lot of bulky gear, and
| | 00:23 | dealing with cumbersome wires,
| | 00:26 | but not anymore. Today, you can use
inexpensive compact strobes units like this
| | 00:31 | one, which communicate
wirelessly with a Digital SLR camera.
| | 00:36 | These wireless strobes, along with a
variety of accessories, make it easier than
| | 00:41 | ever to get great results in a
lot of different shooting scenarios.
| | 00:47 | That's what this series is all about.
| | 00:50 | In each installment I'm going to use
a handful of wireless strobes, and some
| | 00:55 | lighting accessories, to show you how I
approach a particular kind of photograph.
| | 01:01 | I'll describe the planning and the
decisions that go into a shoot, and I'll share
| | 01:05 | some lighting and shooting tips along the way.
| | 01:09 | Now I'll be using Nikon cameras and
strobes in this series, but the techniques
| | 01:14 | I'll be employing apply to any brand of gear.
| | 01:18 | In fact, I'm deliberately not going to
describe specific buttons and menu commands.
| | 01:24 | This series isn't about
specific models and menus;
| | 01:27 | it's about the art and the craft of lightning.
| | 01:32 | My goal is to share my approach so that
you can apply this information to your
| | 01:37 | gear, and your subjects.
| | 01:41 | In this installment our goal is to shoot a
photo that makes a product look its very best.
| | 01:46 | So let's get started and see how that happens.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting the stage| 00:00 | So we're here in the studio and our
task is to shoot a really wonderful product
| | 00:05 | shot of this beautiful new trek bicycle.
| | 00:08 | And we're working in a cove, a really
fantastic space that has a freshly painted
| | 00:13 | white floor and we're going to take
advantage of all the things that we can use
| | 00:17 | today to make a great photograph of this bike.
| | 00:21 | We want the photograph not only to be a
really nice stand-alone image, but we
| | 00:26 | also want to be able to remove the
background using Adobe Photoshop and create
| | 00:31 | what's called a knockout
| | 00:32 | so that we can take this picture and
create a mask of the bicycle and then put
| | 00:38 | that into another background. But the
first task is to make as good a picture of
| | 00:42 | this bike showing all the details,
all the features, all the shapes, all the
| | 00:47 | relative sizes as we possibly can.
| | 00:50 | So the first step was to take the
bicycle and to hang it from the series of
| | 00:54 | Matthew's arms and suspend the bike
from these booms using fishing line.
| | 01:01 | Monofilament line, which is what this is.
| | 01:03 | And we've already got this in
place. Plus, we've prepped the bike.
| | 01:07 | It's virtually a brand new bike.
| | 01:09 | We've cleaned it, we've shined it up, so the
bike itself is perfect lying here right now.
| | 01:14 | The other detail that we did was we
suspended a light from a boom pole into an umbrella.
| | 01:22 | So what we're going to do here is we're
taking this really small light source,
| | 01:27 | in this case it's a Nikon SB-900
strobe, and we're bouncing it into this
| | 01:34 | umbrella, and the umbrella
becomes the source of the light.
| | 01:38 | The strobe head is the origin of the light.
| | 01:40 | We've made it appear bigger to the
object, and the object in this case is the
| | 01:45 | bicycle, and we're going to diffuse
this light by bouncing it over the entire
| | 01:50 | length of the bicycle.
| | 01:52 | So what we're going to do now is we're
going to get some of the
| | 01:56 | other lights, and we're
going to put them in place.
| | 01:59 | So we have here a total of five Nikon
strobes from the Nikon Creative Lighting System.
| | 02:07 | We have three Nikon SB-800s, and two
Nikon SB-900s, and they're attached to a
| | 02:16 | device called a Justin
Clamp, which is what this is.
| | 02:20 | And so we can use these clamps in a
variety of ways to stand up the strobes, or
| | 02:24 | to attach them to something else, and
we've already got a pretty good idea of how
| | 02:28 | we want to light that bicycle.
| | 02:30 | So even though we haven't shot a frame
yet, we've worked through a lot of the
| | 02:34 | concepts in terms of what we want
to do, how we want to shoot it, most
| | 02:38 | importantly, how we want to light it.
| | 02:40 | So this is a Nikon D3S. The device on
the top for triggering all this is called
| | 02:46 | an Nikon slave unit 800.
| | 02:48 | And so this camera and this SU-800
will talk wirelessly to the five strobes
| | 02:54 | that we have, and will fire them, and will give
the proper exposure for each one of these strobes.
| | 03:00 | So the drill is to make sure that we
place the light in such a way that we
| | 03:05 | define the shape of the bicycle as
beautifully as we possibly can, not only
| | 03:10 | to make a really good picture of the bike,
but also to be able to drop out the background,
| | 03:15 | and to take the image of the bike, and
put it into potentially a location shot,
| | 03:20 | because we know that this is a trek
bike, and we might want to put it on a
| | 03:24 | road, on a beach, in someone's
hands, but we'll be able to take this and
| | 03:30 | modify it in a variety of ways.
| | 03:32 | So we're going to add one more element
to this photo which is going to make it
| | 03:37 | work really well and help us to judge
the quality of the photos as we shoot
| | 03:41 | them and make sure that the image is
the picture that's frankly, that's already
| | 03:45 | playing in my mind.
| | 03:47 | So I've got a really good
clear sense of what I want.
| | 03:50 | By attaching this camera to a
Macintosh 15-inch MacBook Pro by this wire, I'm
| | 03:58 | going to be able to fire the camera
from the computer and I'm going to see the
| | 04:03 | image come up on the screen, and I'm
going to see it in a much, much larger size
| | 04:08 | than the tiny little LED
that's on the back of the camera.
| | 04:12 | This is often referred to a shooting in
tethered mode and it's really fantastic.
| | 04:16 | And so by just hitting one key on the
computer, I'm able to fire the camera,
| | 04:22 | the camera in turn is going to fire
all the strobes, and one person working
| | 04:27 | alone is going to be able to do a tremendous
amount of work easily, efficiently, and quickly.
| | 04:33 | So let's get started and put the
strobes in place, and I'll show you where I put
| | 04:37 | the lights, and then we'll test it on
the computer and make sure that we're
| | 04:41 | doing the right thing.
| | 04:42 | And we'll be able to critique the
placement of the lights, and the strength of
| | 04:46 | the lights, and the distance of
the lights all at the same time.
| | 04:51 | So let's get started and
put the lights in place.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Placing the flash for product shots| 00:00 | So our first task is to light the background.
| | 00:03 | We're working in a beautiful new cove
with a freshly painted floor, and in an
| | 00:08 | unusual way, the most difficult task
right now is to put the lights in place, so
| | 00:13 | that we light the background evenly.
| | 00:15 | And so what I want to do is I've taken
these two strobes, and I've attached them
| | 00:19 | to a Justin clamp, and they should
each stand on the floor by themselves.
| | 00:24 | Because I want to bring the light in
from a very low angle, and point it up
| | 00:27 | slightly, and bring them in from the side
in such a way that I've lit the cove evenly.
| | 00:33 | And once I've got that in place then I'll
pay attention to lighting the bicycle itself.
| | 00:37 | So the first step is to come over here
and if you notice that I've got these
| | 00:42 | little booties on my feet part of that
is because the cove is so freshly painted
| | 00:47 | that we don't want to
put any marks on the floor.
| | 00:50 | And so we've done it, this is the
way that we have chosen to do it.
| | 00:54 | So I bring this back, and I put it in
place, and I aim it at about 45? angle
| | 01:00 | into the cove. And I can also angle
it up just a little bit, but these two
| | 01:06 | lights, once they put in place they have
to be symmetrical in every way, because
| | 01:10 | I want soft even distribution of light.
| | 01:13 | I want the background to appear
to be endless: infinitely deep.
| | 01:18 | So this light is already in place, and
then let's put the other one in place and
| | 01:22 | we'll do it the same way.
| | 01:24 | So I come over to the other side of bike,
and again I've got it attached to a Justin clamp.
| | 01:31 | Usually, we would take the Justin
clamp and we would physically attach it to
| | 01:34 | something, but in this case, because
it's such a nice device, and it works so
| | 01:39 | easily, we can use it as a
little mini light stand.
| | 01:43 | So it's essentially a backlight,
because that's how we're using it here.
| | 01:48 | So I look over there and I reference
that light, and I try to set this one up in
| | 01:53 | such a way that it's at the same angle.
| | 01:57 | And I've already got a fairly good
idea of where the edge of the frame is.
| | 02:01 | So I want these two lights to be
right out of the frame, but pointed into
| | 02:08 | the cove in such a way that we have an
even distribution of light all the way around.
| | 02:14 | And if we do that, then it's quite fantastic.
| | 02:17 | So we're looking at three things for
the positioning of the strobes.
| | 02:21 | One: keeping it out of the edge of
the frame, but just barely.
| | 02:24 | Two: cranking the light up, and firing into
the cove itself which is a white surface.
| | 02:30 | So we want to make that to as
bright as we possibly can. And
| | 02:34 | three: we want the position of these two
backlights to be symmetrical, so they're
| | 02:39 | basically crossing each other or
overlapping ever so slightly, and if we can
| | 02:43 | make them overlap, then when you look at
the photograph that background is going
| | 02:48 | to be seamless or endless, and infinitely deep.
| | 02:52 | And if I can do that, then I know that
I'm on target, I know that I'm on my way.
| | 02:56 | And this is the picture that's in my head.
| | 02:58 | So the bike is in place, that overhead
light's in place, and what we're going to do
| | 03:03 | now, is we're going to
focus on the other lights.
| | 03:06 | So come and take a look at this with me.
| | 03:08 | And we've put this light, it's an SB-900,
and we fired it into a fairly large umbrella.
| | 03:15 | Now we're bouncing the light
into the umbrella. And the umbrella is
| | 03:19 | placed in such a way that if the two
backlights are on the edge of the frame
| | 03:23 | there, this umbrella is going to be on
the edge of the vertical or horizontal
| | 03:28 | axis at the top of the image.
| | 03:30 | So we're bouncing this very small
origin of light, the strobe head, into an
| | 03:36 | umbrella, and we're making it relatively large.
| | 03:39 | And what's going to happen is the size
of this arc of light coming out of the
| | 03:44 | umbrella is going to be virtually the
same size as the length of the bicycle.
| | 03:50 | And I know from experience that if I
can make the source of the light, in this
| | 03:55 | case the umbrella, the same size as
the object that I'm photographing, the
| | 03:59 | bicycle, that the light is
going to be very, very soft.
| | 04:03 | So we know that we've lit the
background, and we've lit the top of the bicycle
| | 04:08 | evenly, and now what we have to do is
have an equivalent way of lighting the
| | 04:12 | bottom of the bicycle because the
tires, and the spokes, and the chain, and the
| | 04:18 | crank, all of these elements are a major
part of seeing what the bike looks like;
| | 04:23 | what the shape of it is.
| | 04:25 | So rather than take the light and
put it on the ground, and firing it up
| | 04:30 | directly into the light, we have the
wonderful ability to use the floor as a
| | 04:36 | source for bouncing the light.
| | 04:39 | So what we're going to do now is we're
going to take a single light, we're going
| | 04:42 | to start with just one, and it's also
on this Justin clamp, and we're going to
| | 04:47 | bounce it into the floor.
| | 04:50 | So this is, again, this is the
origin of the light, and the source of the
| | 04:54 | light becomes the floor.
| | 04:55 | So that the floor is going to do the
same thing for the bottom of the bicycle as
| | 05:01 | the umbrella does for the top of the bicycle.
| | 05:04 | And if I've put the lights in
place properly, I'm going to have --
| | 05:08 | sometimes photographers will refer
to this as butterfly lighting, or over
| | 05:13 | and under lighting --
| | 05:14 | so as opposed to doing portrait lighting,
where you bring lights in from the side,
| | 05:18 | which is fine, this time because of the
nature of the object, we're going to use
| | 05:23 | butterfly lighting and we've already
got this light in place, and now we're
| | 05:28 | going to bring another light in from down below.
| | 05:31 | So the position of that light, just for
starters, and we'll see how it looks. We
| | 05:35 | may have to tweak it,
but we'll see how it looks.
| | 05:38 | But for starters, we're going to put
this light on the ground in the center
| | 05:41 | position on the bicycle, and we're
bouncing it intentionally off the floor.
| | 05:47 | That's the reason I have the booties on: I
don't want to mark up the floor in any way.
| | 05:50 | So the next step is to shoot a picture,
and we'll see how close we are to the
| | 05:55 | picture that's already in my mind's eye.
| | 05:57 | I'm trying to put the lights in place
that in a way that's going to match that
| | 06:01 | shot that's already in my head.
| | 06:03 | So I'm going to try to get
this, and make it all work.
| | 06:07 | Let's go back to the camera and the
computer. We'll take a picture and we'll see
| | 06:10 | how it all works.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The shoot, part 1| 00:00 | So we have the camera, into a USB cable,
into a MacBook Pro, and we are going to
| | 00:05 | shoot our first picture, and we are
going to see how good we were in terms of
| | 00:09 | putting these lights in place.
| | 00:11 | So the amazing thing about the
software with Lightroom3, with this new
| | 00:16 | feature Tethered mode:
| | 00:17 | I go File>Tethered Capture, and so I
am now in Tethered Capture. And the
| | 00:23 | camera, and the computer talk to each
other, and the computer sees the fact
| | 00:28 | that it's a Nikon D3S.
| | 00:30 | And all I have to do is press this
single button and it fires the camera. And the
| | 00:35 | camera in turns fires all the strobes.
And the only wire in the whole process is
| | 00:40 | this little wire here that
connects the camera to the computer.
| | 00:44 | So I now get a chance to see this image,
and my first reaction of looking at the
| | 00:48 | image is that number one, it's a
pretty good start, it's not bad at all.
| | 00:53 | The background is evenly lit, and the
bike looks pretty good, but the ratio
| | 00:58 | between the exposure on the bike and
the exposure on the background is wrong.
| | 01:03 | The bike is too dark and too gray,
and the background isn't bright enough.
| | 01:08 | So I want to make two changes.
| | 01:10 | We are now going to tweak it. And this
ability, or this requirement, to be able to
| | 01:15 | look at the photograph on
the fly is really important.
| | 01:19 | In the upper right-hand corner of
Lightroom, there's a device here called a
| | 01:23 | Histogram, and the Histogram is
essentially my electronic strobe meter, so it's
| | 01:28 | telling me that I am already in the ballpark.
| | 01:30 | Now I want to tweak it a
little bit, and get it better.
| | 01:34 | Although I'm in the ballpark, you can
see there's very little information on the
| | 01:38 | right-hand side of the Histogram.
| | 01:41 | That, and my eyes, are telling me the
image is not bright enough. And I not only
| | 01:48 | have to make sure that the bicycle is
right, but I also have to make sure that
| | 01:53 | the background is lit properly. And I
have to make sure that the ratio between
| | 01:58 | the bicycle and the background
is about three stops different.
| | 02:02 | I want the background to be
significantly brighter than the bike, because I
| | 02:06 | want it to both stand alone as an
image, but I also want to be able to create
| | 02:11 | a knockout to be able to drop it
into a catalogue for, in this case the
| | 02:17 | bicycle manufacturer.
| | 02:19 | So the amazing thing about this
technique is that I can now change the strobe
| | 02:25 | settings directly from the camera,
and I know that the image is going to be
| | 02:30 | reflected back on the screen in just a second.
| | 02:32 | So I go into the SU800,
and I crank up the exposure.
| | 02:38 | There are three channels on here, and I
increase the exposure on all three of them.
| | 02:45 | You'll see that on the Nikon strobes,
the display shows EV, which stands
| | 02:50 | for Exposure Value, and refers to the light
output. And then I press Select to confirm it.
| | 02:58 | So I'm using the camera in Manual
mode, and I'm adjusting the exposure in
| | 03:03 | what's called TTL mode or Through The
Lens mode, and this is going to set the
| | 03:08 | strobes for me, in this case 4-strobes.
| | 03:11 | And I am going to adjust both the
shutter speed, and the F-Stop manually.
| | 03:16 | So I want to make sure that I have a
fairly high shutter speed, in this case
| | 03:22 | about a 60th to a 90th of a second.
| | 03:24 | I need the strobes to overpower the
bright video lights in the studio.
| | 03:28 | So I've got this setup in such a way.
| | 03:31 | I have now cranked it up more.
| | 03:32 | I have got more like bouncing
off the floor into the bicycle.
| | 03:37 | I've also got more light bouncing off the
cove, and it should light that up evenly.
| | 03:44 | And now what I have to do, is
I can now take another picture.
| | 03:47 | So with just making an adjustment, with
just seconds, and I didn't even have to
| | 03:51 | go back to the strobes at all, but
by going back here and making another
| | 03:56 | exposure, I should see if these
adjustments have been done properly.
| | 04:01 | So all I do is I press the button.
| | 04:03 | My camera fires, and not only does the
camera fire, but the strobes fire. And
| | 04:10 | within seconds, I have got this
confirming image, and I can see that the bike
| | 04:14 | is darker forest green.
| | 04:17 | I can see that the background is a lot
brighter than it was on the previous one.
| | 04:21 | Let me just show you the previous one
briefly, so you can see the difference.
| | 04:24 | So that was the first shot
and here's the second shot.
| | 04:29 | So I know from experience that I'm
awfully close, because I can now see the
| | 04:36 | definition on the top of the bike.
| | 04:37 | If I go into Lightroom, and I increase
it, I can see that there's really nice
| | 04:45 | definition on the top of the bicycle on
this top bar, and I can look at the seat
| | 04:50 | and there is really nice definition on the
top of the seat, sometimes called the saddle.
| | 04:55 | And then when I come back, and I look
at the top of the tire, the top of the
| | 04:58 | tire is really well lit.
| | 04:59 | Well this is a convex surface, a round
tire, and yet despite that the top light
| | 05:06 | over the bicycle was in such a way
that it gave me a nice diffused shape.
| | 05:13 | And again now when I look at the
bottom of the tire, the tire here is a nice
| | 05:18 | diffused shape and I've got a
couple of catch lights in the wheel.
| | 05:22 | And then if I come over and look at the
front, I can see that this tire is also
| | 05:28 | nicely lit, and it's lit identically to
the front one. So I have good balance from
| | 05:34 | the front of the bike to the back. It
wouldn't work very well if the front
| | 05:37 | light were too light or too dark, or the
back light were too light or too dark.
| | 05:41 | The light on the wheels has to be even.
| | 05:44 | Think of it this way:
| | 05:45 | in doing the picture like this, we
are essentially building a tent of
| | 05:49 | light around the object.
| | 05:51 | So we've surrounded the bike with
light and we have done it by large
| | 05:56 | diffused light sources.
| | 05:58 | Not tiny, little, pointy light
sources, but large, diffused light sources.
| | 06:02 | We started with the small origin of
light, the strobe heads, and we have bounced
| | 06:07 | it in multiple ways, and now we
have large, diffused light sources.
| | 06:11 | And we take this really complicated
shape called a bicycle, and we've lit it in
| | 06:16 | such a way that it looks even and
natural, and we can see into the details of
| | 06:21 | the bike. Because it's really important
to me as a potential bike buyer that I
| | 06:26 | know what I crank is made of, or maybe
what kind of tires are on it, or what kind
| | 06:30 | of wheels are on it.
| | 06:31 | And the advantage of doing it like
this is that I can see these details.
| | 06:36 | So if I go back again, I would like to
try this one more time, and I would like
| | 06:40 | to see if I can make it brighter just once more.
| | 06:43 | So this is the last exposure, and as much
as I increased it from the first one to
| | 06:48 | the second one, I'd like
to try it one more time.
| | 06:51 | I may go slightly overboard with it,
but that's okay, that's part of the
| | 06:54 | tweaking process. But I want to make
sure that I have done it as well as I
| | 06:59 | can, and that all these shapes are
defined, and that the exposure on the bicycle
| | 07:06 | is separate from the exposure on the background.
| | 07:08 | So let's try it one more time, just once more.
| | 07:11 | So I come back to the camera, and I go
back to the SU800, this is the only thing
| | 07:16 | that I need to switch.
| | 07:17 | So the lights that I am changing now
are the two lights on the floor bouncing
| | 07:23 | into the cove, and the third light on
the floor bouncing into the floor. The top
| | 07:29 | light into the umbrella is staying the same.
| | 07:33 | And that's a good thing because this
particular strobe controller unit only
| | 07:38 | allows me to do three channels at once.
| | 07:40 | So I've got it set up, so I have got
one, two, three lights that are being
| | 07:44 | controlled directly by this.
| | 07:46 | I haven't touched the light in the umbrella,
the overhead top light, I have left that alone.
| | 07:52 | So now I've got it set, and we are going
to shoot one more picture, and I may have
| | 07:57 | overdone it and that's fine. But what I
want to do is to take it as far as I can
| | 08:01 | take it and see what it looks like.
| | 08:03 | So now I go back to Lightroom.
| | 08:06 | I hit the Capture button,
one click, it fires the camera.
| | 08:12 | The cameras fire 4 strobes.
| | 08:14 | I wait 10 seconds, and there it is.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The shoot, part 2| 00:00 | I have only short three exposures so
far, but each exposure is better than
| | 00:04 | the preceding photo.
| | 00:06 | But I want to try it one more time just
to see if I can make it better one more
| | 00:09 | time yet, and I think I can.
| | 00:11 | And the advantage is, I
still have one more strobe left.
| | 00:14 | So now what I would like to do, is to
take this strobe, and put it on the floor,
| | 00:20 | take the one in dead center that's lined
up with the center of the bicycle on the
| | 00:23 | foreground, and move it over, and
have two parallel strobes on either side,
| | 00:29 | firing into the four, And seeing
what I can do, by adding a single light.
| | 00:35 | And I think by adding a single light,
I can take the photograph and make it
| | 00:39 | better still one more time.
| | 00:41 | And by better, I mean brighter, more
accurate in terms of color, and just a
| | 00:46 | better representation of the product.
| | 00:48 | So let's just try that.
| | 00:50 | So I have one last SP800, because we
only have five strobes at our disposal.
| | 00:56 | And again it's attached to this Justin clamp.
| | 00:59 | So all four of the strobes on the
floor are working on Justin clamps, and I
| | 01:04 | put it in place, and now I aim it down.
| | 01:08 | Again, I want to keep it out of the
frame, and so I know that at this distance
| | 01:15 | from here to here, that this
strobe will be out of the frame.
| | 01:19 | So I have got this light bouncing into
the floor, and now I am going to take
| | 01:24 | this light and move it over, and put it
at an equivalent distance on this side.
| | 01:32 | And by doing that, I think that I have
got a symmetrical positioning of the
| | 01:38 | lights in the foreground, and
symmetrical positioning of the lights in the
| | 01:42 | background. But I now have
more light coming from the bottom.
| | 01:46 | So again, it's butterfly
lighting: top or bottom lighting.
| | 01:50 | We have light coming from the top; we have
the light coming from the bottom: sources.
| | 01:55 | One large source from an umbrella, and
a single source from the bottom with
| | 01:59 | two origins of light.
| | 02:01 | And I go back to the computer, and I go
up to the Capture button. Hit it with a
| | 02:08 | one click, and this
photograph looks awfully good.
| | 02:13 | Now I think that by adding the
light a couple of things happened.
| | 02:18 | I have created greater detail on each of the
two wheels at the bottom, which I like a lot.
| | 02:24 | So here, if I go up and look at the
bottom of the wheel, the wheels look really
| | 02:32 | great, and the spikes are really well defined.
| | 02:35 | And if I go over and look at the other side,
it looks great, but it's also balanced.
| | 02:42 | The two wheels are balanced.
| | 02:44 | I like what the light did
on the overall look of the photo.
| | 02:47 | I left the light on the top alone, and now
I've added just light from the bottom.
| | 02:53 | I think I can make it just slightly
better. And what I want to do is to
| | 02:57 | take the exposure down on the bicycle, and
leave the exposure on the background alone.
| | 03:03 | So if I go back to the camera, and I go
back up here to the SU-800, I can go up
| | 03:09 | here and I can change these buttons
in such a way that I have affected only
| | 03:16 | the two floor lights that are bouncing
up into the bicycle, but I have left the
| | 03:21 | backlights alone, which
is what I have just done.
| | 03:24 | So I am going to take a picture one more
time, and this time, if I have gotten it
| | 03:28 | right, the bicycle is going to get
slightly darker. The bicycle got slightly
| | 03:36 | darker by about a half stop,
and the white stayed the same.
| | 03:40 | So with the slightest change, the
fifth exposure, the image looks great.
| | 03:45 | The bike looks great. The background is
clean. It's very white. The photograph
| | 03:50 | works well as a stand-alone image,
and it also will work well if the client
| | 03:56 | chooses to put it into a background.
| | 03:58 | So if I magnify the image, and look
at it carefully, I can see that I've
| | 04:03 | gotten really nice limelight over all
the horizontal surfaces here. And then
| | 04:08 | I come down to the wheel, and the
front wheel looks good, the spokes look
| | 04:13 | good. Each one is individually lit. I
come back, and I've got a nice catch light
| | 04:18 | here on the bottom.
| | 04:19 | I come back to the rear wheel; I can
see that the light looks really great. And
| | 04:24 | I know that I was able to make this
very simply, and I was able to light the
| | 04:29 | bike in such a way that
the products looks great.
| | 04:32 | And the product was made to
look great through the light.
| | 04:35 | So we had four lights on the floor:
two of them bouncing into the foreground
| | 04:40 | that was lighting the floor. The floor
in turn was, the light was reflected up
| | 04:44 | or bounced up, and lighting the bicycle.
| | 04:47 | Two more lights lighting the cove in
the background. And the fifth light was
| | 04:52 | a light from overhead, a bounce light,
that was coming into this umbrella that's
| | 04:57 | brought in very, very close to the top
of the bicycle, And it's lighting the
| | 05:01 | bike, from top to bottom. And I
was able to do it five lights.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tips to remember for product shots| 00:01 | So we made a great product shot of a bicycle.
| | 00:04 | Now you may never have to
photograph a brand new bike, but there are
| | 00:07 | certain techniques that apply no
matter what kind of product you are
| | 00:11 | shooting using Wireless Flash.
| | 00:14 | Here are some tips to keep in mind.
| | 00:16 | First tip: do your homework. Browse
some magazines, catalogues, the web, and
| | 00:23 | look at photos of other similar products.
| | 00:26 | Study how other photographers
approached the task. How do they position the
| | 00:30 | product? How did they light it?
| | 00:33 | Try to reverse engineer the shots.
| | 00:36 | Your goal is not to copy another
photographer's style, but to get a feeling for
| | 00:41 | how other photographers
have approached similar jobs.
| | 00:45 | Next tip: plan your shot.
| | 00:48 | Choose a lens and a camera position
that accommodates the product you're
| | 00:52 | shooting, and the space
where you're shooting it.
| | 00:55 | The size of your working space, and the
size of the product, will determine the
| | 01:00 | focal length of the lens you can use.
| | 01:03 | For large items like a bicycle,
you'll need to make sure that your working
| | 01:08 | space is large enough that you can
shoot the product without having to use a
| | 01:13 | wide-angle lens that might introduce distortion.
| | 01:16 | If you're shooting using Seamless
Background Paper, you'll also want to make
| | 01:20 | sure that the background is wide enough to
include the entire product from left to right.
| | 01:28 | For the bicycle product shot, I worked
in a TV studio that has large wrap around
| | 01:33 | cove walls and a high ceiling.
| | 01:36 | It was perfect for shooting a large
item like a bicycle, and because of the
| | 01:41 | curved walls, we didn't
need seamless background paper.
| | 01:45 | Now a space like this is a luxury
that I don't usually have, and it was a
| | 01:49 | great place to work.
| | 01:51 | But it presented its own challenge:
| | 01:53 | bright video lights. I had to make sure
that my strobes could light the bicycle,
| | 01:59 | and overpower the ambient
light created by the TV lights.
| | 02:03 | To do that, I measured the ambient
light using the light meter in the camera.
| | 02:09 | Then I set up the strobes and cranked
up their power, so that their output was
| | 02:14 | at least one or two F-stops
brighter than the video lights.
| | 02:19 | Now you may never have to shoot in a
brightly lit TV studio, but you might have
| | 02:24 | to shoot a product in a space
that has bright ambient window light.
| | 02:29 | If you don't have the luxury of
finding a darker location, you still have
| | 02:33 | a couple of options.
| | 02:35 | One option is to move the strobes
closer to the subject to increase the
| | 02:40 | relative brightness.
| | 02:41 | Another option is to reduce the window light.
| | 02:45 | Cover the window with something:
a dark cloth, a piece of seamless
| | 02:49 | background paper, a window blind, a
bed sheet, or even a shower curtain
| | 02:55 | stolen from the bathroom.
| | 02:56 | At one time or another,
I've done all of these things.
| | 03:01 | The bottom line is that lowering the
ambient light in the space reduces the
| | 03:06 | need to crank up the power of the
strobes. Because remember, asking small
| | 03:11 | strobes to fire at full power, or even
close to it, increases the recycling time,
| | 03:18 | and drains the battery's faster.
| | 03:20 | Next tip: use a tripod.
| | 03:24 | Take advantage of the fact that you're
shooting something that doesn't move.
| | 03:27 | Put your camera on a tripod.
| | 03:30 | This makes it easier to compose
your shot with more precision, and make
| | 03:34 | adjustments to your lighting.
| | 03:36 | No need to put down and pick up your camera,
and recompose your shot over and over again.
| | 03:42 | Also think about shooting in Tethered
mode. As I described when we did the
| | 03:47 | bicycle shot, this lets you view your
photos on a big screen instead of your
| | 03:53 | camera's tiny LCD screen.
| | 03:55 | The large view can make it much easier
to adjust lighting and exposure settings
| | 04:00 | since you can really see
the details of your photo.
| | 04:04 | Next tip: compose your shot carefully.
| | 04:08 | In product photography, your goal is
to create good-looking photos that show
| | 04:13 | the item accurately.
| | 04:15 | To get that accuracy, make sure you
compose the shot in a way that doesn't
| | 04:20 | distort parts of the product.
| | 04:22 | For example, you might get unwanted
distortion if you use a wide-angle lens, and
| | 04:29 | get too close to the product.
| | 04:31 | For the bicycle shot, it was important
that the wheels appeared perfectly round,
| | 04:36 | because it turns out that it's hard to
sell a bicycle that has warped wheels.
| | 04:41 | The solution was to suspend
the bicycle using fishing line.
| | 04:46 | This allowed me to shoot straight on,
and eliminate distortion and shadows that
| | 04:51 | would've taken a long time to fix in Photoshop.
| | 04:55 | And finally, one last tip.
| | 04:58 | Estimate how many lights you will need,
and estimate where to place those lights.
| | 05:03 | Your goal is to light the product
evenly, and in a way that shows details, and
| | 05:08 | avoids unwanted reflections or hotspots.
| | 05:11 | Often, adding just a single strobe to
the ambient light can make a big change in
| | 05:16 | the look and feel of the image.
| | 05:18 | But if you think you'll need a lot of
artificial light sources, then by all
| | 05:23 | means use them. Bring every strobe
you own, and borrow or rent additional
| | 05:28 | ones if you need to.
| | 05:30 | And, ultimately, this is why
it's important to do your homework.
| | 05:34 | Get to know the space where you are working.
| | 05:37 | A logical, consistent approach will help you
minimize problems, and shoot better photos.
| | 05:43 | Thank you so much for watching!
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
About the AuthorAn interview with Jim Sugar| 00:01 | Photography was something that from
an early age it felt right to me, and more
| | 00:06 | importantly it made me happy.
| | 00:08 | And one of the very, very earliest
pictures that I shot got published in the New
| | 00:13 | York Times Sunday Book Review, and the
Times paid me the princely sum of $25,
| | 00:18 | which at that time was a fortune
and that was a great experience.
| | 00:22 | And I also had a chance to photograph
William Manchester, who at that time was
| | 00:27 | writing Death of a President about
John F. Kennedy who had been assassinated
| | 00:33 | about two years earlier, and
those pictures got published.
| | 00:37 | So I learned very early on, A, that I
was good at photography and I shot nice
| | 00:42 | pictures and that there was a
market to do the kind of work that I did.
| | 00:46 | Even though I was living in a relatively
small place like Middletown, but it was
| | 00:50 | halfway between Boston and New York.
| | 00:52 | And so I made a lot of weekend trips
back and forth between Boston and New York.
| | 00:56 | Fairly early on during a geographic
story I had a chance to meet the man who I
| | 01:02 | consider to be the smartest human
being I've ever met, the absolutely great
| | 01:07 | Burt Rutan, the brilliant airplane
designer who up until about a month ago
| | 01:12 | lived in Mojave, California.
| | 01:15 | His most famous project was the X-
Prize where he actually built two aircraft,
| | 01:21 | the White Knight One and SpaceShipOne,
and it went up to 100,000 feet and came
| | 01:28 |
| | 01:28 | back down again, SpaceShipOne did, and landed.
| | 01:32 | And then that same aircraft had to be
refueled and flown again less than 10 days
| | 01:37 | later in order to win 10 million
bucks, and Burt designed these airplanes.
| | 01:44 | I was lucky enough with Burt that at a
time when his company was producing a
| | 01:51 | huge number of aircraft, sometimes they would
be working on multiple designs at any one time.
| | 01:58 | Because my connections within the
aviation industry were pretty good, sometimes
| | 02:03 | I'd be able to do a story for
Popular Mechanics on one of Rutan's planes,
| | 02:07 | sometimes I would do -- I had a lot
of Rutan's airplanes in the Geographic,
| | 02:12 | sometimes it's just a single picture
in a bigger story or story in a book.
| | 02:17 | But when I got a chance to photograph
Burt Rutan's airplanes there were two
| | 02:21 | things that were happening;
| | 02:23 | one were air to air photos
of the airplanes in the air.
| | 02:25 | How do you take a picture
of an airplane in the air?
| | 02:28 | And you come to realize very early that
just because you're 3000 feet up in the
| | 02:32 | air you still have to think
and act like a photographer.
| | 02:35 | You've got to be able to see pictures.
| | 02:37 | You still have to tell
the story of that airplane.
| | 02:40 | But then when the airplane was down on
the ground, that same airplane whether
| | 02:44 | you did it the night before or the next
day, it was a big piece of modern art.
| | 02:50 | It was really sophisticated either
sheet metal, or carbon epoxy fiber, that had
| | 02:56 | been formed into this
thing that we call an airplane.
| | 03:00 | With Rutan airplanes each one was the
mark of a generation, and so what were the
| | 03:04 | features of that airplane that were
distinctive, and how much time would they
| | 03:08 | give you to photograph the plane, and
where on that airport can you take the
| | 03:14 | plane in order to photograph it?
| | 03:17 | And mostly we worked at twilight.
| | 03:19 | So the pictures of the airplanes on
the ramp at twilight, and each plane was
| | 03:23 | different, the thought process, the
way of working, the way of seeing that
| | 03:27 | airplane, of telling the story of that
airplane was exactly the same process as
| | 03:32 | photographing our friend Tony holding
the pizza in front of Tony's Pizzeria,
| | 03:38 | right at the magic hour in Ventura, California.
| | 03:42 | One guy happened to be in Mojave, the
other guy happened to be in Ventura, but
| | 03:46 | it was all about telling
stories and illustrating this concept.
| | 03:51 | Later I got involved with some
friends of mine at the Geographic, mostly
| | 03:55 | Rick Gore who was a great science writer at
that point, and I started to do science stories.
| | 04:01 | So as a result of doing science
stories they had a different requirement and
| | 04:05 | I learned how to light, and
learning how to light and learning how to tell
| | 04:09 | the story of complex subject.
The most difficult one was gravity.
| | 04:14 | I did a story on gravity for the
Geographic and that was really, when I got that
| | 04:18 | assignment it was really a gut shot for me.
| | 04:21 | How do you photograph something
that you can't see, smell, touch,
| | 04:27 | put your hands on, do anything to it?
But it's there all the time and you're
| | 04:30 | surrounded by it and you -- it's your
job to illustrate that. How do you that?
| | 04:35 | In order to photograph gravity I
had to show the effects of gravity or
| | 04:39 | the things that it did,
| | 04:41 | because I couldn't take a picture of
it directly. And I had a great picture
| | 04:45 | editor at the Geographic, Bill Douthitt,
who is a very close friend of mine to
| | 04:49 | this day, I'm happy to say.
| | 04:51 | And he and I decided that in order to
do gravity one of the things we needed to
| | 04:55 | show was we needed to illustrate Sir
Isaac Newton's concept of a feather and an
| | 05:01 | apple dropping at the same rate.
| | 05:04 | And that lead to doing a photo
which again to this day was the hardest
| | 05:09 | photograph I've ever done.
| | 05:11 | And I was able to find a vacuum
chamber at NASA Ames in Mountain View,
| | 05:17 | California and we build a trap door
and got a feather and an apple and I
| | 05:24 | collected them very carefully, and
then I got a special set of lights that
| | 05:30 | fired about 20 frames a second.
| | 05:33 | And I was able to figure out how to
fire these strobes, and we took all the air
| | 05:40 | out of the vacuum chamber and we put
the feather and the apple at the top.
| | 05:44 | And then when I pulled the release on
the trap door, the feather and the apple
| | 05:49 | fell in the vacuum chamber and it
took about three days to get it right.
| | 05:55 | I didn't get it right the first time,
but at that time we were shooting this on
| | 05:59 | Kodachrome and there was a Kodak
dealership right down the street where we could
| | 06:02 | get the film processed overnight.
| | 06:04 | It's not like using one of these
digital cameras where you can see that -- I
| | 06:08 | didn't know that I had the picture or not had
the picture until the next morning literally.
| | 06:13 | And the second day I still didn't
have it right, but by the third day I had
| | 06:17 | everything dialed in, and frame
after frame after frame was perfect.
| | 06:22 | There was no manipulation of the image,
the image was very, very carefully set
| | 06:26 | up, but we did it right and we did it honestly.
| | 06:29 | That was the kind of shot that
occurred at a point when I was learning
| | 06:32 | photography that I couldn't have done
that as an earlier photographer, but at
| | 06:36 | that time it was really a
breakthrough shot for me.
| | 06:39 | And so photography for
me became problem-solving.
| | 06:43 | Are you doing street people down in
South San Francisco under the freeway
| | 06:47 | somewhere next to the railroad tracks?
| | 06:49 | Okay, you can do that, but at the same
time somebody may ask you to go out the
| | 06:53 | next day and do a CEO of a corporation,
or a CEO of a company where the photo
| | 06:59 | has to be lit, or you may have to go
out and photograph a feather and an apple
| | 07:03 | dropping in a vacuum chamber, and do it
honestly, it can't be done in Photoshop.
| | 07:09 | So there were other people who were
done similar things before that, but for me
| | 07:13 | the level of complexity for that shot
gave me a lot of confidence that almost no
| | 07:19 | matter what was thrown at me
photographically I could figure it out.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
