This was a video challenge from my friend Martin Bodvisson, a wonderful product photographer from Sweden who has a great YouTube channel. And I must say, with all humility, that despite Martin’s excellent instruction, I outperformed him in several ways: 1) I took 7 times longer to get the shot, 2) I took at least 30 times as many shots, and 3) It took me dozens more layers in Photoshop to clean up the many flaws. Better luck next time, Martin (wink).
One of the key reasons that shots like this are so hard is managing the reflections can drive you nuts, and it’s nigh on impossible to shoot a product like this with one lighting setup. I shot this as it is typicall done, with separate lighting setups for the near lens, the near bow, the far lens and the far bow. Then it was just plain old compositing. (BTW, these are just my wife’s $9.99 Walmart sunglasses, but they look like they sell for a hundred bucks.
Here’s the big Flickr version.
Meta: Pentax K-3, 100mm f/2.8 macro lens @ f/10, ISO 100, 1/160th of a second, more lights and reflectors than I care to admit, several images stackes
