Interesting Video

[rpcrowe]

This is an interesting video on shooting a bottle as a product shot...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqa9pbsTJQ0

I have not tried this procedure so I cannot comment on how relevant the techniques are...

[Shadowman]

Was interesting, thanks for sharing.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for passing that along, Richard. I've never used a grid and it was informative to see its effect. The photographer gave an effective, concise presentation.

Based on the similar styles of tabletop photography I've done, the techniques he used are very relevant if you don't mind spending a lot of time selecting the images to be used and then taking the time to merge them. It's just a personal preference, but I prefer doing the creative stuff when constructing the setup rather than during post-processing.

I would probably have made the photo using two images -- one for the label and one for everything else. I might have made a third image to light the foil. I would have also used continuous-light lamps, as I don't have the luxury of using a strobe and its modeling light.

The one technique that surprises me is that he changed his focus to capture the foil. Doing so changes the magnification of the foil ever so slightly, but I would think it would be enough to cause problems when merging the foil with the rest of the bottle. I didn't watch the part of the tutorial where he explains the merging, so he might have addressed that detail. I much prefer to use the same focus in all of my shots that keeps everything in focus that I want in focus.

I want to put a special spotlight on his technique of placing the light source above the bottle when lighting the front of it. Doing so places the direct reflection on the shoulder of the bottle, which invariably is a position that makes it very easy to remove during post-processing.

[Mike Buckley]

The photographer explained that instead of using the large soft box placed behind the black background to outline the bottle in bright tones, he could have placed a scrim between the strobe and the background. I forgot to mention that another even less expensive and less gear-intensive method would have been to simply place the strobe or any light source behind the background with its light shining toward the large white wall behind his setup.

[ST1]

Thanks for posting this Richard. Having watched the video I thought he explained his studio approaches very well. But to be honest he lost me with some of the work he did during the compositing of the set of images to the final output. It made me realise how little I know about the use of layers, groups blend modes etc, in fact it would probably be fair to say how little I know about Photoshop in general.
However it has made me think about a special bottle of Malt I have that I could use to try out the techniques demonstrated in the video, though like Mike I would have to use a different light source as I don't have the type of light used in the video.
Thanks again Richard.



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