Who said the Leica M9 can only do street photography?
I have been the resident photography for the wife’s Cake/Cookie hobby. If you’re into cute and amazing cakes and cookies, check out her blog, flickr, or facebook.
Most of the photos you see on her site were shot by me. Product photography was simple back in the Canon days. Slap on the Canon 100mm 2.8L Macro on the body. Set it on tripod. Wired it up for remote shutter release. The only thing I had to worry about was the light and product placement. The camera did everything. Well almost everything. I usually set it up in full manual or Aperture Priority. Since it’s in an control environment, I knew the settings.
Tip #1: Product photography shooting workflow.
Put your camera on a tripod. Get a Remote shutter release or use the 2s timed release that’s build into most cameras. Set your camera at Aperture Priority mode. Set your Aperture to f/8 – f/16 depending on how big the product you’re shooting. Or use a larger f/stop to create the bokeh focus 1/3 into the product. This will make sure your entire product is within focus. Set your ISO at the lowest ISO your camera can take. I use ISO160 for both the M9 and Canon. (There is some article saying why 160 works better for Canon) Take note of the shutter speed reading. Make adjustments as needed base on your lighting condition. Product placement, compose, then Shoot!!
Most everyone including myself started product photography by buying lots and lots of lights. You can never have enough light to light the product. Then you need the soft boxes, the light tents, etc. Mainly, that’s how the professionals did it. You want consistency on the product shots. But one major side effect of the resulting shots as best put by my wife. The picture looks sterile. There is no soul. It’s a clean picture, but just blah. You can probably see some of the examples on some of the earlier shots in her Flickr and blog. Most of them were done with the Canon 5DMKII or Canon 1D MKIV w/ 100mm 2.8L combo fully lit. As I started to shoot her cakes and cookies with the Leica, I notice one thing.
Tip # 2: Let the available light for for you and NOT you work for the light. Essentially what this means is use your camera’s setting with the tripod to make the best of available light. Remember the take note of the shutter speed reading in tip #1? Since you’re on a tripod, you can let in a much light or as little light as you want into the camera by adjusting your shutter speed. Let the camera do an initial reading for you then if you need a brighter shot, slow down the shutter speed or if you need a darker shot, raise the shutter speed. One important note, make sure the camera is on a steady ground and when you release the shutter, it’s not introducing any shake, or else, it will be a blurry picture for the most part.
By shooting it this way, now you can see the details of the product, in my case, Cakes and cookie. The shadows are just important as the highlights. Before, I would light the entire area to get rid of shadow. Now, I embrace the shadows!! By all means, I’m just beginning to try out this new method and slowly putting all my light away.
The Hello Kitty cookie set you see on this page was done with natural window light or 1 CFL in a soft box rather than my previous setup with lights on all three sides with one on top.
Definitely keep an eye on her blog as I will be shooting a lot more of her delicious treats!!
d.Clin.design 