This week I shot and delivered a set of product photos for Foam Sales. That was an interesting job because I used natural light instead of using my usual strobe lighting. Typically, product photographs need powerful and consistent lighting due to:
- deep depth of field (need the whole thing in focus)
- low ISO (as clean as possible with no digital noise)
- shooting hundreds of products for ‘catalogue’ work
But I have rare occasions when I could use natural light in my ‘back studio’ where it’s entirely white and brightly lit all day long. I used this room with no additional lighting because:
- products are not reflective or glossy (i.e. foam products)
- products are fairly large
- needed completely white background (RGB 255, 255, 255) not ‘white looking’ – it was easier to achieve the effect in this setup due to the size of the products
- had about 10 products to shoot in an hour
This is the ‘lighting’ setup in the rear studio. As you can see, there’s a window behind the subject. I have two sheets of EPS (polystyrene) for reflecting light back to the products.
This is the image straight out of the camera, which means it’s the original image before any retouching.
Camera settings: 1/13 Sec (camera mounted on tripod) at F/8, ISO 200
I’d make a quick edit so the image is punchier to match the actual look of the subject.
Then, I’d add mask all around the corners (make them brighter) to make my editing job easier in Photoshop. Those little dots are mask handles showing how many I applied to the image.
After a quick cleaning job in Photoshop, this is the final image.
Cleaning out the background stuff was minimal work in Photoshop.
Now you know how it’s done!
Cleaning out the background stuff was minimal work in Photoshop.
Now you know how it’s done!
