Quickleen-S Product Shoot... for F.O.F.

Got a call from a friend asking if I'm ok to help his friend Peter take some product shots on goodwill. Peter want to use it for some brochures, emails, and possibly some blow-ups. Well... decided to do it as a favor to a Friend Of Friend (F.O.F.) and these are the results... 


Thoughts
Two things of note here. First, the containers are all white. Next, the sticker labels are metallic and adhere around the container, creating a very wide family of angles that produces reflection.

A simple solution is to use a grayish background but because this product deals with cleaning, I want to give it a very clean look. I decided to use white background and go high key. Also, white subjects on a white background will offer Peter maximum flexibility in the composition of the piece during his advert production.

Getting The Shot
The first step was to thoroughly clean the containers with soap and soft sponge. They were covered with black smudges when Peter passed them to me. This was an important step because I didn't want to spend countless hours photo-shopping black spots away.

Next, with the help from my beloved girlfriend, we cleared the kitchen area and freed-up the dinning table for the shoot. Two pieces of white mahjong paper covered the table top, secured by Blu-Tack, while another piece went to the kitchen wall as background and adhered also by Blu-Tack.

Three lights were involved here.

The main came from the top, centered directly over the subject. I didn't have a C-Stand so I had to use a socket wrench to remove the extend-able top pole from my normal light-stand and tied it across the remaining vertical pole of the stand using a square lashing. The end of the now horizontal pole need to be tied down across the vertical pole to counter the heavy studio strobe + soft-box.

To prevent the light modified stand from toppling over, the base legs need to extend as wide as possible. After mounting the studio strobe + soft-box, the modified stand was centered on the working table and raised about a feet over the subject.

Because the main light will cast some shadows below the rim of the containers, a fill light was needed to fill in the shadows. The fill was from another studio strobe on the camera's left, placed about a feet away and just out of the metallic labels' family of angles to prevent direct reflections.

As I didn't have a seamless background, in order to achieve a seamless white all the way from the table top to the wall, a background light was needed to match the background white with the table top white. The background light was from a Canon 580EXII + optical slave, mounted on a monopod with base and placed between the subject and the white background, hidden from view.

Lighting Diagram
Using The Online Lighting Diagram Creator produced by London photographer NGUYEN DINH Quoc-Huy, I managed to easily create these lighting diagrams to better illustrate the setup. Million thanks to NGUYEN DINH Quoc-Huy!!



End Note
Well... Peter was happy with the result and that made me a happy man. Of course, there is always room for improvement and one such improvement is to place a black Gobo between the top of the subject and the main light to bring back the "disappearing" container top. Till next time...!


Shooting Information:
Camera Body: Canon 40D
Lens: EF 50mm f/1.4 USM with Hood
Mode: Manual - Av @ F8, Tv @ 1/60
ISO: 100
Focusing: Auto
Tripod: Manfrotto 190XPROB
Ball-Head: Slik 800 Quick Release
Lighting: Main - Alien Bees @ 1/11, Fill - Alien Bees @ 1/32, Background - 580EXII @ 1/8
Flash: Alien Bees B800 with HighSun soft-box
Flash: Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash with Sonia Optical Slave
Monopod: Manfrotto 680B with Manfrotto 678 Universal Folding Base and Manfrotto 234RC Quick Release Head
Light Meter: Sekonic Flashmate L308BII