miko

I thought I might show the lighting setup for some product photography I did recently. This was not shot for commercial use. I'm a full time graphic designer and we used this for placement only in some designs we are working on, but it gave me a chance to practice and experiment with some new techniques.

First of all, i had to use real ice in the glass. This meant getting a bag of ice since the two ice trays in our freezer weren't going to cut it. Ice melts and it melts quickly. But before I even got to the lights I used an stand-in glass with warm cola to get the lights where I wanted then and try some test shots. The following diagram shows the lighting set up. These are all studio strobes, btw. For those that don't know, strobes flash once when you hit the shutter button on your camera. As opposed to "hot lights" which are on all the time. Which is why they get really hot! Although more expensive, the lack of heat and the neutral color of the strobes far out weigh the extra cost. Anyway, here's the setup... What you are looking at is a birds eye view. The ball/star is the glass of cola. One light behind the product on camera right shooting into a silver reflective umbrella which bounces the light back at the subject. Another light behind the product on camera left shooting straight at the product with some barn doors on it to control the light direction. These two lights are lighting the cola from behind to give it the orange glow. If you were to light it from the front it would just look black. To get some light on the front there is a big softbox above (not in the diagram) and then some white reflectors bouncing light onto the front of the glass as well as some black flags to control shadows. Confused yet? lol



Once the lights were setup and I was pretty much happy with it, I got the real glass and filled it with ice-cubes. Then I slowly poured in the cola until i got the fill level I wanted. Now i noticed that I didn't have any fizzy foam on top. So i grabbed some dish soap and some cola, mixed the two together until i whipped up some cola suds which I then applied with a spoon to the top of the cola. In this pic they are a bit too soapy so next time I'll have to adjust the soap to cola ratio. I later tried mixing in some glycerin and that seemed to help too. Speaking of glycerin, i then sprayed a glycerin/water mixture on to the glass to get some more sweat. I couldn't quite get the drops I wanted so next time I will wax the glass before hand to get better water droplets. But by this time my ice was melting and i had to start shooting. This is the image I got after adding some contrast adjustment in the computer. Nifty, eh? We were clipping it out so the background didn't matter.



So anyway, there she is. It aint perfect, but it was fun and I know what to try next time to make it better. Ideally, you would use fake acrylic ice cubes and warm cola so you don't have to worry about ice melting. But the cubes are pricey and we were short on time. I also would have been able to get better water drops with the glycerin since the glass wouldn't have been sweating on its own. I would have more control. Ah well, next time. What I was happy with was the color of the cola and the nice highlights and shadows along the sides of the glass as well as the green rim on the base. But i got a lot to learn!

I hope this was at least a little bit interesting for a few of you.

fnaqzna

Very cool. Lighting is pretty much a mystery to me.

ngdawg

Nice. Here's a trick to get real cola "foam": pour another small glass halfway then add a spoonful of sugar. It will foam up like no one's bizness. Then just add the foam to the glass set for the shot.

miko

Thanks, ngdawg! I'll have to try that...