Behind the Scenes From My Recent Product Shoot

sunglsbw2

I took the shot you see above for a project I was working on, and I wanted to share it here and show a little behind the scenes stuff, because on this coming Monday’s episode of Photoshop User TV, I did a step-by-step tutorial on the post production I did after the shoot using Camera Raw and Photoshop CS4 (on Monday you can watch the episode online, right here).

The production shot below (taken by my assistant, Brad Moore), shows the simple three-light set-up used to light the sunglasses. Now, don’t let all the boom stands and stuff make you think this set-up is more complicated than it really is. I’ll break it down below the photo.

sunglassessetup

First, I wanted a black background behind the sunglasses, so Brad slid a black Westcott flag (made of black felt) over a boom stand arm, and that’s what you see behind the sunglasses (you can click on the photo to get a much larger view). Then Brad used three boom stands and fishing wire to hold up the sunglasses (as seen above).

I used three lights: (1) One Elinchrom Style RX 600 strobe with a softbox directly above the sunglasses aiming straight down, to put a highlight across on the top of the sunglasses (2) There’s another Style RX 600 strobe aiming up from below it, to add a highlight across the bottom of the sunglasses, and (3) the 3rd light is another Elinchrom strobe with softbox aiming right at the front of the sunglasses to light the glass part in the front of the sunglasses. The flashes were triggered using Skyport wireless triggers.

CAMERA SETTINGS: The photo was taken with a Nikon D3, at f/22 at 1/200 of a second. The ISO was set at 200. The lens was a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens, and I shot it racked all the way out at 200mm. I took the shot mounted on a Gitzo tripod with a Really Right stuff ballhead.

sunglasses-before

Here’s the before photo as it came out of the camera. As you can see, there are some challenges with the background, the fishing wire, and the front of the glasses, and that’s exactly what I cover on Monday’s show, so I hope you’ll tune in and check it out then.

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  1. WOW! thank you so much for this. Doing product shots today and have been racking my brain oh how to shoot our eyewear!! This is GENIUS!! thank you!!

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