Camera Labs

I went into town today and remembered I needed a new phone as I have been paying for a contract on a phone that died months ago, anyway I had been inspired by Alex and his home made studio thread so thought I would give it a go and try my own take on some promo shots for the w890i phone I had just upgraded to.

Taken with a sheet of frosted glass to diffuse the reflection a bit, underneath was some satin fabric I purchased in town, I used flash bounced off the ceiling (as I do not have a diffuser yet) and a pair of daylight lamps I have for taking pictures of my products for my business.

As always please let me know your thoughts, my failings, and generally different ways I might have considered taking the shots etc.


ISO: 640
Shutter: 1/5
Aperture: f/22
Focal Length: 50mm


ISO: 640
Shutter: 1/5
Aperture: f/25
Focal Length: 85mm

Thanks for looking

_________________
EOS 5D | EOS 40D | 28-80 L f2.8 - 4 (took a swim) replaced with 24-105 F4 L IS USM | 70-200 L F2.8 IS USM | 17-85 | 70-300 | 100mm USM Macro | 50mm 1.4 | 50mm 1.8 II | 2x Extender | 100mm Macro USM 2.8 | 3x 285HV Vivitar Flash | Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger system | 430EX

My DPC Profile | My Website

Nice photos. Nice phone too!

I've got a w810i which is like the grandfather of that phone lol...

_________________
Graham
Flickr

Thanks Graham

It's a great phone but the buttons take some getting used to.

I have an idea for a New vs Old type shot using one of the old phones I have laying around, just really trying to take shots along the lines of an Advertising type theme with it as a kind of mini project, I feel like I am learning something new everytime I pick the camera up (which isn't often enough at the moment heh), hoping to shoot a lot this weekend though

Would love for people to throw some ideas or comments in to the mix though

_________________
EOS 5D | EOS 40D | 28-80 L f2.8 - 4 (took a swim) replaced with 24-105 F4 L IS USM | 70-200 L F2.8 IS USM | 17-85 | 70-300 | 100mm USM Macro | 50mm 1.4 | 50mm 1.8 II | 2x Extender | 100mm Macro USM 2.8 | 3x 285HV Vivitar Flash | Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger system | 430EX

My DPC Profile | My Website

If anyone would like to comment on this shot it would be much appreciated

I just had to pick the camera up this evening as I have committed to taking at least 10 shots a day and as I mentioned above I have kind of taken the new phone and built a project around it. I came up with the slogan "stand out in a crowd" and started to put together some ideas and taking some test shots, eventually I came up with the one below.

I used one lamp from the side pointing straight at the floor to limit the amount of illumination it put out, then bounced my flashgun straight off a warm red brick fire place to push the colour into the phones screen, I also tried to push the other phones out of focus as much as possible but the lighting was really quite low.

I couldn't find an old Nokia 5110 I have laying around so had to use a BT Dect house phone which kinda looks out of place, but this is just a mock up really for now.


ISO: 100
Focal Length: 53mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter: 1/250
EV: was either +1 or +2 cannot remember exactly for this shot.

Does the image work at all?

_________________
EOS 5D | EOS 40D | 28-80 L f2.8 - 4 (took a swim) replaced with 24-105 F4 L IS USM | 70-200 L F2.8 IS USM | 17-85 | 70-300 | 100mm USM Macro | 50mm 1.4 | 50mm 1.8 II | 2x Extender | 100mm Macro USM 2.8 | 3x 285HV Vivitar Flash | Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger system | 430EX

My DPC Profile | My Website

I m going to comment:
i see directly on the 1st too shots that the cloth or the blanket that your are using is dirty or the glass itself is dirty this really bothers me, as i would like to see a clean crisp background that is just there..

Now to your second try: i m not so sure about that lightnig, seems to me as if there was only i light coming from the "front" of the phoen making the phone itself reflect the light as well on the screen and ruining the reflection quite nicley, while the "side" that is shown to me is really dark and in my oppinion that doesnt work in shots like theses. On the other hand the backgrounds is really nice and black on this one which i like, i have also experienced that you cant really throw too much into the frame when shooting this way, becuase it just doesnt balance out nicley, maybe a two smaller things that is but you mainley want the eye to focus on one thing. And that yellow lightning could be fixed by using the WB that i told you about on my thread if i m not mistaken, its a bit too yellow for my taste, i would like to se a more natural white looking shot!

edit: forgot to mention, thanks for sharing your shots its nice to see that your inspired by me

_________________
My Picasa

My Flickr

That's a fair critique Alex.

Thanks for sharing your photos with us Mark-A. I'll add my thoughts for all your images too.

Images 1 and 2: The composition and lighting isn't bad. You're encountering similar problems to your car show photos - DoF and apertures. Both images will benefit by reducing the DoF and making the phone the subject. At the f-stops you're using, you also reduce your IQ by diffraction - and this is exactly the case with both images not quite sharp despite using such small apertures. Can I suggest using aperture priority and setting an f-stop of 7.1-8 to get the front and back sharpness, but with a little drop off in the periphery. Then we wouldn't be as able to see the texture/dirt on the reflective surface you used as much.

Image 3: Here you can see the reduced DoF working by isolating the subject and blurring out the periphery - the aperture here was better controlled. Composition-wise, it's more interesting than the ones before, but you need to place the SE phone more to the left of the frame - it's unbalanced as we see it now. Having the phone straight would also be aesthetically pleasing, but I can see it's hard to do that. Perhaps apply some blu-tak to the back to help support it?

Definitely too warm but this was due to your fire reflection. Lighting can be much better than that, but the idea is good. If you have another attempt, try this one lamp solution: have a desk lamp positioned above and to the right of the frame to light the face of the phone. This will bring up the screen with reflections and pull out a shadow to the left. Also spot meter for the phone if you do this.

_________________
Nikonian

http://www.edtangphotography.com
http://journeysintophotography.blogspot.com/

I really like the concept of the third shot. I think the DOF is too small though, the Nokia in the foreground is a little hard to make out at first. Perhaps you could expand the DOF to include all the phones but focus the light beam so they don’t illuminate the others as much? I quite like the orange seeing as it is the walkman trademark.

Could this possibly be a sneak speak of SE’s next ad?

_________________
Graham
Flickr

"Could this possible be a SE next ad"

i knw it wont, got a freind working over there and he told me that with thier walkman tradmark is going to go for that moody/young action look to it

_________________
My Picasa

My Flickr

Thanks guys great comments!

Alex the Cloth and Glass were exceptionally clean I spent ages cleaning both meticulously, unfortunately the cloth I used is called Satin (in the UK not sure if that's a name used elsewhere in the world) this type of material shines but what I did not realise until it was under daylight lamp lighting is that there are white fleck particles in it which makes it look dirty (so I need some different material ). I removed the glass from the last shot altogether as it was just highlighting the flecks too much.

The lighting is from true daylight bulbs (or in this case daylight bulb) so altering WB would not really help here I believe as the orange effect was actually something I was trying to achieve as Graham says its the Sony Ericsson Trademark colour I moved the whole studio in to place to achieve the look, but I can totally see what you mean by it looking too warm, and I will be using the comments on here to improve the next shot Actually just wondered if it was worth adding these shots were done after 12AM and the room was otherwise pitch black so there was no additional lighting to the scene that's how low the lighting conditions were heh.

PhotoJ thanks again really helpful comments I am still learning how the f/stops alter the image and in which situations to use Av instead of Tv and what settings will get the desired effect in each mode - I know faster shutter usually increases the aperture size and thus reduces DoF but as yet I am not able to get close to guessing what aperture / shutter speed will give good results for any given subject (one of the reasons I am using widely different settings on shots so I can monitor the results).

So next steps I think are to funnel the light on to the main subject and make it higher to bring in a shadow on the left, increase DoF a little to make the front phone more focused, maybe get hold of some some lighter orange cardboard to bounce the flash off to reduce the warmth a bit and find that other Mobile so the Dect isn't necessary

Thanks all, seriously it is much appreciated that you took the time to help.

_________________
EOS 5D | EOS 40D | 28-80 L f2.8 - 4 (took a swim) replaced with 24-105 F4 L IS USM | 70-200 L F2.8 IS USM | 17-85 | 70-300 | 100mm USM Macro | 50mm 1.4 | 50mm 1.8 II | 2x Extender | 100mm Macro USM 2.8 | 3x 285HV Vivitar Flash | Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger system | 430EX

My DPC Profile | My Website

Hey Mark-A,

Just wanted to compliment you on the creative way created the surface to shoot the phone on. The reflection of the frosted glass with the black satin underneath, creates a great three-dimensionality to the image with the reflection of the phone. Something akin to what you might see if you had "black ice" to shoot on. That certainly gave me some ideas!

I see some of the same things that alex and photoj points out. The high F-numbers with it's deep depth of field make the phone look a little "flatter" or two-dimensional and detracts a little bit from the "this phone is larger than life"-effect..lol. Fortunately it's easy to experiment with lower F-numbers.

An idea to explore on this interesting surface could be to prop a corner or a side with play-doh, thus elevating and changing the angle of the phone for variation. This way you can make your angle to the surface more shallow, reduce the speckles in the satin and not sacrifice visibility of the front of the phone. Just an idea.

All that aside, I really like the pics and your creativity.

CHeers

LahLahSr many thanks for your comments, sorry it has taken a while to reply, I have been away for a few days and not long got back home.

I will definitely be trying the shots again taking on board all the ideas and comments in the thread so far - I have a couple of other ideas and catch lines etc to try out too so hopefully I will keep the thread running and kind of document it a bit if people are interested to see me improve on the shots with other members help?

_________________
EOS 5D | EOS 40D | 28-80 L f2.8 - 4 (took a swim) replaced with 24-105 F4 L IS USM | 70-200 L F2.8 IS USM | 17-85 | 70-300 | 100mm USM Macro | 50mm 1.4 | 50mm 1.8 II | 2x Extender | 100mm Macro USM 2.8 | 3x 285HV Vivitar Flash | Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger system | 430EX

My DPC Profile | My Website

Heh...I'm a bit of a macro-enthusiast myself so I will be checking this thread out for as long as you add to it

Here's a shortcut to a thread where I've tried to do my own set-up, in case there might be something in there for inspiration:
http://www.cameralabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3837

Cheers!