studio kayak photos

[SimonMW]

As a favour for a friend of mine who is selling kayaks, I need to take some 'studio' based shots of the various boats and their fittings. I haven't done any of this type of photography before. Although I produce videos for a living and I am used to video lighting for interviews and sets, product photography is totally new to me.

There are a few problems I need to overcome and I would appreciate some suggestions of technique and equipment. I will be using a Canon 60D to take the photos with.

A few issues I have been having so far are:

1) The size of the kayaks. They are around 8ft long, and finding a way to make a nice flat backdrop is proving very difficult. Ideally this needs to be white. The other day I tried it with my video green screen with the idea of removing it in PS, but lighting it flat with my limited gear was almost impossible.

2) The shininess of the boats. I want them to look nice and new, but the specular highlights are proving to be fairly large and difficult to control.

3) Lighting the cockpit area without washing out the rest of the boat. I think I'm going to have to find some small lights somehow to place inside the cockpit area.

I have attached three of the photos so far so people can see.

 

[Garry Edwards]

I can't help with the space, you'll need a lot of it and that's all there is to it, unless you want to forget about the background and do a cutout later, which is probably the way to go.

The specular highlights problem is easy to overcome with the right equipment. What you need to produce is diffused specular highlights that you can see through, to the subject beneath, and this involves a large diffused light source (softbox or silk) at least 3x the size of the subject and placed so close that it's only just out of shot. See this link, it's about lighting tomatoes but the principle is identical.

Lighting the cockpit area without washing out the rest of the boat is easy too. Small lights hidden in the area will do the job, or you could use another studio flash head with a honeycomb fitted to it, to control the spill.

 

[Kris]

Two 8foot shoot through silks either side for flat shadowless product lighting (bedsheets would do).

Use a much longer lens to avoid the distortion and the need for such a wide background. Get up high on a ladder

Three metre wide by ten metre long super white vinyl (http://www.bessel.co.uk/acatalog/Vinyl.html) to get as much distance between model and background and easily light each seperately.

I wouldn't light the interior of the kayak, it might look a little weird. Id just mark it in Photoshop and lighten slightly.

Unfortunately, you need a s***lot of space and at least four lights for this to be done properly.

 

[SimonMW]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, keep em coming!

Space in itself isn't a huge issue as the guy who is selling the kayaks has a gigantic industrial unit with a large amount of clear floor space I can use. A big problem though, related to the space, and especially if using silks, is the amount of lighting power needed. Coming from video (without knowing a huge amount about stills lights) I would usually have to use an HMI PAR for such a thing. Not cheap, not even to hire!

I will need to retain some shape/sculpting, as one thing that kayakers are looking for is how the hull is shaped.

 

[Garry Edwards]

An HMI PAR will theortically do the job, but you'll need a long exposure and this can cause other problems, especially with light pollution from other sources.

Your best (and cheapest) option is studio flash

 

[Kris]

Power is not a problem with studio flash.

If you only have weaker guns, like 125s or 200s, then as the item isn't moving any time soon, you can multi-flash it while holding the shutter open if you want a greater depth of field to hold front to back focus. Just get rid of any ambient first or shoot it after dark.

Straight flash should do you okay though.

Shape - then you can get away with using just one flash and large reflector to the other side (the same bedsheet will do), and move in and out until you have as much fill as you desire.