Fabulous tabletop photography tutorial

[Mike Buckley]

This video tutorial is the very best one of its kind I've ever seen. It's relatively short, extremely concise and chock full of information that is explained perfectly clearly.

When I read the introduction to the tutorial, I was excited at the possibility of learning something new. Interestingly, I didn't learn anything new. Instead, I learned that the exact same approaches and techniques I use when making my tabletop photographs of virtually any type of subject are explained in this tutorial. That includes the acknowledgement that it's impossible to eliminate dust at the time of capture (a particularly huge problem in my makeshift studio, which is located in a storage room filled to the brim with stuff stored for decades on shelves on the wall and in the ceiling, and which also has a door that opens directly to the outdoors). The tutorial also implicitly concedes that some characteristics of the image are so much easier to achieve during post-processing than at the time of capture...and that doing so is just fine.

Enjoy...especially if you aspire to doing tabletop photography!

[Rita]

Good video. Thanks for sharing it.

[Shadowman]

Saved for future reference. Thanks

[chauncey]

Advancing years have brought me inside...one thing that I've learned is that nothing beats shooting
in tethered live view. It takes all the guesswork out of positioning/lighting/whatnot.

[Mike Buckley]

nothing beats shooting in tethered live view. It takes all the guesswork out of positioning/lighting/whatnot.

Agreed. My enjoyment of doing desktop photography increased dramatically with the use of wireless, tethered shooting.

[xpatUSA]

Thanks for the link, Mike.

I found the part about lighting especially useful- almost literally "drawing with light".

[Mike Buckley]

almost literally "drawing with light".

Not almost. Entirely.

[rpcrowe]

Really excellent tutorial... One thing that I might comment on is that if he were doing this commercially, it would be a bit faster shooting with studio strobes that incorporate a modeling light. Although he does a great job with his hotshoe flashes (Strobist style) using a WYSISYG studio flash system with modeling lights would be, IMO faster since he could pretty well see what he is getting as he adjusts the lights. Of course, his results are excellent but, in any commercial work, time is money!

[xpatUSA]

Originally Posted by xpatUSA
almost literally "drawing with light".

Not almost. Entirely.

Arguable.

Please draw the Mona Lisa or an outline thereof with a strobe, an umbrella and a piece of black board then post it here.

[Mike Buckley]

I didn't mean to imply that the image was made entirely by drawing with light. Instead, I meant to imply that the light was used entirely to draw.

[rpcrowe]

Isn't a penlight used to draw

By the way, using black boards or other black instruments is a very good way to delineate shape on shiny objects like metal. As an example, without a black object to reflect, flat lit silverware is very dull looking...

[Mike Buckley]

without a black object to reflect, flat lit silverware is very dull looking...

I disagree with that generalization, though I don't know what you mean by "flat lit" in the context of silverware. If you mean that flat lit lighting is lighting that displays no shape, I would argue that any subject I can think of that is lit that way will be very dull looking.

Notice in the photo shown below that the silverware, napkin ring and plate are shiny. There were no black objects in the room. Yet to my eyes none of the shiny, metal objects are very dull looking.

[rpcrowe]

I should have said, "without some dark reflections"... Your silverware has some dark reflections which delineate its shape. Along the image left side of the forks, on the knife blade and handle and along the bowl of the spoon....