Product Shots
Product shots are usually only in commercial productions and most of the time will be the final shot in the piece. Because it is showcasing the brands product, everything has to be perfect. It's best to try and push production to schedule product shots earlier in your work week, this will help to relax the agency and client as they know they have this crucial portion finished.
Techniques
These articles have to be incorporated into this.
Specular Reflections - ASC Blog Post
Camera
- Brighten the contents of beverages you shoot.
When shooting beverages, you can use gold or white showcard behind the beverage and hit it with light. This will help to brighten the contents of the bottle. If you are pouring a beverage you will have to build it into the set design, as you can't hide a showcard behind an empty bottle. This could be a window or a practical.
- Order a snorkel lens for small products
Depending on the products you're shooting, may need snorkel lens so that you can get close enough to the product and still allow the light to pass around the camera.
- DOF is a challenge
Should be shot with enough DOF to get the product in focus. Use DOF calculators and photometrics to determine the amount of light needed and consider stop loss from the snorkel lens and other filters being used.
- Use Macro Lenses or Diopters
Will need either macro lenses or diopters to get focus close enough to get details of the product.
- Consider camera height
A Weaver-Steadman head can also be very useful since it will allow you to get much lower.
- Best to use WFM, False Color, or Spot Meter
Incident readings are not worth much because lighting a product is mostly about reflections.
Lighting/Grip
- Often times the strongest light is the backlight. This is done to accentuate the product
Especially with beer or other carbonated beverages, this is what will allow you to see the bubbles.
- Consider reflections in the product.
If lighting reflective surfaces, you are not directly lighting the object, you are shaping light on objects around the product to light it. Can also make gradients or color gradients on the bounce card to give different texture in the shot. Use a flashlight or laser pointer to figure out where reflections are coming from.
- Use multiple jibs to make straight line moves that can be controlled by the operator.
If you want to do straight line moves you can use two jib arms on top of each other. This will allow one jib arm to pivot to correct for the arc of the first jib arm and allow for a straight push in.
- Use small close bounces for small products.
Can use small showcard, white, silver, black, so that you can get shape in the objects.
- Use Cookies and Scrims to muddle a bounce
Can make a bounce not so clean white by introducing some shadow into it.
- Use Snoots, Lekos, or Mini Lekos to get small accents on the product.
Anything that will give you a hard controllable source is helpful.
Techniques for Shooting Cars
When lighting cars on exteriors you'll often times just have to work with Natural Light. Consider the same suggestions for lighting a product with reflections above, but there are some additional hints to help you here. These also apply to shooting a car on stage.
- Pick the right location
Low hills give the reflection of the sky in the car. Make sure there will not be a direct sun hit in the car as well.
- Wait until everything is hung to bring the car in.
Car is too valuable to be rigging overhead
- Trucks usually are shot at a lower angle
Usually they would like to see trucks as dominant, so low angles are preferrable.
- Sports cars higher angle
So low profile that it can be difficult to see all of the vehicle unless you are shooting from a higher angle.
- Sometimes manufacturers will provide stills of what they prefer to see.
They may have an idea already of how they want to see the car and what they won't want to see.
- Road Surface is important
Don't want to see a road with freshly covered potholes. Needs to be a clean surface.
- Telephone Poles can be Problematic
Seeing the reflections of the telephone poles and seeing them in the frame can cause issues.
- Cream colored or white colored cars are difficult to shoot
Usually lighting a car is all about reflections. It's difficult to see differences in brightness in a light colored car.
- Consider using Longer Shutter
Will help to smear the wheels and the background. 220 is as slow as you should probably go.