Intro to Product Photography

Today Julian took us through a number of different lighting options for product photography. From simple overhead softboxes with reflectors, to refracted light shining through glass to give it shape.

We then got t to take a few shots of an item we had brought in using one of the setups. Our group grabbed the setup with a large overhead softbox and a flash head with a reflector illuminating the background. My item was my point and shoot lumix waterproof camera.  We tried a basic shot then tried using gel to change the background. We also added some water droplets to illustrate the waterproof feature. The alignment of the product and horizon line could have been better in all shots but for a 1st attempt Im happy.

Workshop 2 – Studio Week 4 research questions

In a given situation you are using a Pulso 2 flash pack with a single head and P70 reflector attached.  The subject is 2m from the head and the unit is set to a power setting of 10 and a flash meter indicates correct exposure will be achieved by using f64.  Your maximum lens aperture is f2.

Given:

Unit: Pulso 2
Heads: 1
Reflector: P70
Subject d: 2m
Power: 10
f-number: f64

Answer the following questions.

1. The Guide Aperture (GA) of this unit is;

[a] 64

2. Moving the subject to a new distance of 4m would require the use of;
[c] f32


3. Moving the subject to a new distance of 8m would require the use of;

[e] f16

4. In the given situation above, what f-number would you use to achieve correct exposure if the subject was moved to 64m?

f2

In a given situation you are using a Pulso 2 flash pack with a single head and P70 reflector attached.  The subject is 64m from the head and the unit is set to a power setting of 10 and a flash meter indicates correct exposure will be achieved by using f2 for a single flash discharge. Your maximum lens aperture is f2.

Given:

Unit: Pulso 2
Heads: 1
Reflector: P70
Subject d: 64m
Power: 10
Flash number: 1
f-number: f2

5. Complete the table below to maintain correct exposure for each new power setting.

Pulso 2 Flash Power setting
Number of flashes
Required to maintain correct exposure.
10 > 1 flash
9 > 2 flashes
8 > 4 flashes
7 > 8 flashes
6 > 16 flashes


Let’s make this challenging, 

6. Assuming you have just correctly exposed your subject in the previous question with power setting of 6; how many flash discharges would you need to correctly expose the subject if it was now moved to 128m.

Answer: __32__ flashes  (phew)

Research Questions Wk3 - Guide Numbers & Studio Flash Units

What is the Guide Aperture (GA) of both the Pulso and Primo units?
128

Let’s assume you had a flash unit with a GA of f64.  With a subject placed 4m from the flash head the f-number to use to achieve correct exposure would be;

[c] f32


Using the same flash unit as in question 2 above and a subject placed 16m from the flash head the f-number to use to achieve correct exposure would be;

[a] f8

Changing the Pulso 2 power setting from 10 to 9;

[a] halves the output

[b] reduces the output by 50%

[c] reduces the output by ‘1-stop’ (photo lingo)

[d] would require the use of a lens aperture 1 stop wider to achieve the same exposure



Describe what you understand by the term Symmetrical Power Distribution.
Power output will always be distributed evenly between multiple connected flash heads

First Hands On Session with the Broncolor Pulso

Our exercises today involved setting up a number of shots using the Broncolor Pulso Studio flash units. The initial shots used only a single flash head with a softbox and then later we moved to a softbox as well as another head with the flood reflector. Using the studio flash systems was a huge improvement from using the tungsten lights as I could now obtain sharpish images (no camera shake issues :)

The first two shots we set up were to demonstrate Hollywood and Rembrandt lighting. Without a light meter we were just guessing the exposure on all shots.

Rembrandt Lighting - f8 @250 ISO100

Hollywood Lighting - f8 @250 ISO100

The aim of the next 3 shots was to demonstrate the use of black, grey and white backgrounds. We achieved this by varying the distance of the light to the background.


To get the black background we moved the light a long way from the background as it had completely dropped off.

Black Background - f8 @250 ISO100

To get the grey background we attempted to get the light 2.5x time further away from the background as it was from the model.

Grey Background - f8 @250 ISO100

To get the white background we attempted to get the light the same distance from the background as it was from the model. About 1.5m each.

White Background - f8 @250 ISO100

We were then supposed to experiment with two power packs and different power outputs. Unfortunately there were none spare so we moved on the the next set of shots.

 The next task was to pick a picture from a portrait book and try to recreate the lighting. We picked two shots, one quite bright and clean and the other a bit moody with heavy shadows.

For the first image we positioned a large softbox directly behind the subject pointing towards the camera. This gave the very crisp white background. The 2nd light was fitted with a flood reflector and was positioned high left of the photographer. Overall I think the lighting worked well and was pretty close to the image we were trying to replicate.

f8 @250 ISO100

 For the 2nd image we had the flash head with the flood reflector positioned directly to the left of the subject at about shoulder height. We then positioned the large softbox directly on the other side to the right of the subject. We used a flag to cut out much of the light from the softbox, leaving only a small slit to provide a small amount of light to the back of the subjects neck. Again I think this lighting worked ok.

f11 @250 ISO100