product lighting, how to improve this- UPDATED with product shots

Flat, soft, photographed from far too close and with pretty bad lens distortion. But a big improvement on your first efforts, and if the client thinks they're OK...
 
I thought they were going to be shiny boxes.. well count your blessings that they're not ;)

You're losing a whole lot of shadow detail on the pics, the front grilles, buttons etc should be more defined. Not easy to pull off though, I couldn't do it without more lights and probably a bunch of gobos getting involved.

Photographic qualities aside, I'm kind of a target buyer group for this type of equipment - meaning I spend my company's money on similar kit. From that perspective:

- you have the photo angles pretty much nailed (every vendor has the face on shot, the back panel shot, the 45 degree perspective and the front from slightly above).

- there's distortion of the shape due to a too wide angle lens as Garry said. But hey, I know they're rectangular boxes. So I don't really care (as a buyer). If it was furniture, I'd be wondering if the carpenter needs glasses.

- bit annoying that I can't read the text labels. I want to know what knobs are on the front panel and the connectors on the back without reading the manual online. Yes I know they're small jpegs and possibly a bit soft but think of that when putting images on the web.. make a big version available!

As a comparison, IBM also sells black rectangular boxes which aren't shiny. And here's a shot from their site:

jct01004c_systems_support_reflib_206m_pic_overview.jpg


Yes that's the official shot. Yes it's black. But it looks like gray because something has to be lighter for contours to show. Our brains will accept it as black though, so don't worry. Especially engineer brains who care more about the difference between 2 things than the absolute..

You've come a long way, now tease out some detail from those front panels and don't be afraid to pull up from the blacks. We - the buyers - are engineers, not photographers :)
 
Thanks guy for the crit, helps me out a lot and understand what this product shooting is all about.

Agreed, a little soft. Could have done with a little sharpening. I was told they'd be used in leaflets and the company's website at small sizes, so hopefully this isn't too much of a big deal in this case.

I realised there was distortion when it came to editing the pictures, made me a bit nervous.. I'll definitely watch out for that next time.

Also i agree that parts of them are a bit underexposed, but with the whole colour thing, I was told specifically though to ensure they looked quite dark and black.. the previous shots they had showed their products looking quite grey and the director didn't like that :S So i do agree with you on that, but when I showed one of the bosses the pictures of the first product photographed she pointed that out, so I guess it's just trying to find the right balance.

Luckily they mustn't have noticed many flaws with the pictures if they've invited me back though. I still got loads to learn!
 
Last edited:
TinySpark said:
Ok... PANIC :( I was taking some pictures for banter and this started happening..

started off like this..
DSC06182.jpg


then it grew, wtf!
DSC06197.jpg




I swapped lenses over and the problem is still there..
I cleaned the CCD and it's still there too.. AHHH!
Click to expand...


Nice model BTW....
 
Set your shutter speed to the correct speed and you won't have this problem
 
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