Filed under: Baby & Child Photography, Product photography, Strobist | Tags: baby, children, clothing, hat, muts, mutske, mutskes, Strobist, wentiti
It seems that @wenti found her creative outlet and to celebrate the unveiling of her new product line I got to turn the house upside down for some funky looking product shots. But of course it’s the mutskes that steal the show.
May I present to you : “pinnemuts”, “bloem”, “pompon” & “bij”.
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More pictures & hats will be added to her flickr page. The facebook fan page is in the works! :)
Setup
The trick was to find a way to mount the hats, since we don’t have babies in different age groups freely available we turned to balloons instead. At first the balloons were held upright by putting a magnet inside the balloon and one underneath a glossy piece of paper, but 999 balloon bursts and 2 very scared kittens later we went for a different approach: suspend the hats from a crossbar with a nylon thread. (this involves a clever mix of sewing, taping & cursing)
Cluttered setup shots here & here
Strobist
580EX at 1/16 through softbox camera left.
White cardboard (box) for bounce/fill shadow camera right.
FL40 with colored gels underneath shiny surface table aimed at white wall.
Camera on tripod ISO100, 1/200, F4
Okay I’ll admit it. I’m abusing my blog to sell my 2 sigma lenses. But I am using that to share something with you as well, and it was a good excuse for me to play around with my new toys.
Business first, I’m selling my 24-70mm f2.8 EX and 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS, both lenses are in great shape and they perform as expected. More info on pricing can be found in this forumtopic.
The 24-70 has been my trusty companion for about 90% of my photos and as you can see from the last pictures I took, she is still in great shape. She comes with a sexy lens pouch, a UV-filter (82mm) and a sleek lens hood to accentuate her shape. The 18-200 OS is a nice walk-around lens for outdoor usage for the beginning photographer. *waves to uncle bob* He is a sturdy fellow equipped with a lens hood and as you can see from this picture, he can get pretty excited. He also features a OS stabilizing mode to reduce handshake. Both lenses are less than a year old.
Now on to the fun part !!!
So I needed product shots, our newly painted room would make for an excellent background color. I had a white unused shelf board in the basement, the board happened to have a varnished paint coating that brings out reflections so that was an added bonus. First I used just one flash through a medium softbox on camera left. I brought in the softbox very close to the subject to fill in the specular highlights as best as possible. I could have done a better job on the front of the lens. One simple solution would have been to set up a big white sheet and shoot trough that. Other options included moving my softbox to the other side to reduce reflections. (A different angle on the lens would have hidden the side with the focus ring) I didn’t plan on using the front shots anyway so I didn’t pay much attention to fixing this problem. (I still have a neck issue)
The background with just one light was okay but I wanted it to have something extra so I added another flash with a DIY gridsnoot (new word?) aimed at the background. I don’t remember the exact power settings on the flashes, I believe 1/16th for the main, and a bit more for the gridsnoot (it eats some light). Shutter speed kept at 1/250th, F stop between 4.5 & 8 (I played with the ISO to compensate, lazy me).
The setup
The complete set with the product shots can be found here.
From setup to cleanup it took less than an hour to complete the job. It doesn’t have to be more complicated to get results.
Even if you are not buying, I hope you find it helpful.
