Hey this is Daniel Norton,
I'm here in my studio in New York City,
and today I'm doing some product photography.
I get asked a lot about shooting other than
models, shooting food, shooting product,
whatever and I decide to do something
really cool for you guys.
I have all my data lights
out and I thought I would play with all
the various cool things we have, and show
you guys how to light up something, so
I've actually got here a...
I've got here what is
essentially....
a statue or a bobble head...
I guess, of Zeus right?
So this guy here is kind of a little Bobble
head, it was given to me as a gift
by Annie Cahill oh...
thanks Annie uh....
who by the way is the person
that got me into shooting video,
so you guys can thank her, or be mad at her...
or whatever,
and I've had this thing for a
little while, and what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna photograph this thing, and I
thought hey, this is used, you know he's
the the you know the the god of
lightning and thunder.
He's at the, the, you know in the Greek
Pantheon so...
the first thing I did was,
I wanted to have like thundery clouds,
that was kind of my idea,
and what's actually kind of
interesting about this is, I originally
had this other idea,
about how I was gonna shoot him,
and I noticed when I looked at it,
he's technically looking down,
which kind of makes sense if you know much
about the you know... Greek Pantheon
you know they're on a mountain,
so I had to position myself slightly low
and, and again, I want this thundercloud
kind of look. So I thought I'm gonna use
all warm light, tungsten light balance for that,
and I'm gonna use my HMI, so over here I
have a 200 watt HMI from Dado..
data light, this is basically bouncing into
their Eflect System, which gives you the
ability to kind of throw these really
cool dappled patterns of light, and I
thought man this would kind of look like
you know, thundery clouds behind him you know,
you know the vibe of it, without
going too crazy, but one issue that I
have is, that I'm working with something
that's small, I don't, I don't want to
like light up a whole room with this
thing right? Because of the where I'm at,
so what I did was, I made sure I used a
long enough lens.
So I'm using a 150..
this is the 150 from Erickson.
This is a macro lens,
although I'm not getting super close.
I'm using a 150mm because it compresses
my background, it's gonna allow me to
shoot you know against this,
like relatively narrow board, and
fill the whole frame with it.
So you guys can see, you know,
that that's the case.
We will see once I wind it up,
that that's the case, that the board is
gonna be completely covered.
So once we have that in place, we're
basically going to start lighting them up.
So what I'm gonna do is,
I'm actually going to come here...
you guys can't to see through my
camera as we go, so I'm on a tripod here
but I think I was basing my exposure
around 1/60th or 1/100th of a second
f/5, and I'm gonna frame it up first.
I'm using the Nikon Z6, and we're about
focusing it too much right now but he's
more or less right there,
and the very first light I'm gonna add
besides the background is, I'm gonna add
an overhead light.
I wanted him to look kind of
intimidating, so I wanted throw some like
shadow down in his face.
So I've got this Dedo Soft here which
again is a tungsten light, so it's gonna be
warm but I have my white balance set
that way and I'm basically,
putting it directly above him just like that.
Right, that's going to give us some light
coming down, but if you notice,
some of that light is hitting
the background, so what I want to do is
angle this so that's not the case right?
so we're actually going to tilt it
slightly towards camera, you could also
use a grid to give yourself some control,
but that also increases contrast, so I
thought I would just tilt it.
Sometimes the simple solution is just to do
that, so this is giving me now...
this kind of moody angry...
you know dark eyes and hair.
Now I'm gonna focus, I am going to
punch in... so again I'm just punching in
so I can see really well,
and it was gonna come in here, he's
looking at me, there we go.
It's funny, I'm still punched in
usually a 150, you can see a jiggle.
Good, good, good, so there he is,
and that's what we have so far, right?
he looks pretty decent,
he's lit up, but what I'm not liking is
I'm getting some of this blue light
hitting them on the side.
So I'm gonna eliminate that by using a
flag, so I just have a flag right here,
put it right here...
and I'm basically just gonna move this
guy in, to block, any of that warm, that
cool light I should say, from hitting him.
I'm blocking the light, this is not
negative fill, this is just blocking the light.
I mean none of that HMI
light is hitting him now...
That should clean him up a little bit.. yep,
now he's nice and cleaned up, I'll get
that little thing off his face, so you
guys can see.
So I'm gonna now mess
around a little bit with the background.
I don't really love the patterns making
so that's the cool thing about this, you
literally just flex and move it to get
what you like.
It's a little too dark I think..
what happens if I do this.
What I'm doing now is..
I'm throwing a live view on
a Capture One yeah... we go that way.
I can actually see that I'm clear from here
as I do it.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, for you guys I'll give
you whatever looks best in the final
video, but for me I'm using the Capture
One, so I can see it yeah... that's pretty cool.
It's like tweaking it a little bit at a
time, some clouds moving in the way I
want them to, and cause I blocked the, the
white light on him, or the cool light on him.
I don't see it that's actually
really cool, done, that looks nice,
close that down...
Alright, so next though I want that
shadowy pattern on his face,
but I feel like it's a little bit too
dark, and not really that great, so what
I'm gonna actually use is, I have another
Dedo here this is the Dedo HM 4300.
You guys probably seen me use these a bunch of times.
These are the first Dedo lights I ever had
and some of my favorite, they're
really nice really, really focusable,
but what we're gonna do is, we're going
to add to it a couple of accessories.
I've got the the DP 1.1, which is a
projection attachment with 150 mm lens
and ammm also... it's fitted,
with an iris.
So in addition to that, I'm
going to drop that in, that's my light shield.
The light shield guys is so that
spare light doesn't bounce around... ok.
So again, this is a dimmable tungsten
light, I was gonna fire it up, so you guys
can see typically when I'm doing this.
I will crank the light to its full power, so I
can see where I'm aiming it.
I want to put it right on his face to fill in a
little bit, but clearly that's too much,
even with the projector on there, so what
I'm gonna do is use the Iris, and close
up my circle, just like the part of his
face that I want.
Just like that, to the camera to see what
it looks like.
Now there's a lot of ways
I could do this..
clearly it's too bright right now.
I'm just gonna look and dial it in, my eye at
this point, you could use a spot meter
there's a lot of things you could do but
I feel like this is one of the better
ways to do it.
Now I am actually gonna
add something to it... so that looks
about right exposure wise, but I'm gonna
add something.
I've got here on the front of this the eye kit
and this is often used for eyes,
but and this is his eyes right...
it's got this piece of diffusion,
it's got glass diffusion that kind of
scatters the light in a really pretty
way, especially you know for this purpose,
and it's gonna actually, now what I'll
do so you guys can see, I'm going to turn
the exposure up a bit...
so you guys can see it again,
and you'll see how it scatters,
it, see the difference there?
Without it, with it, scatters it makes it
really nice, now I'm gonna look here and
I'm literally just adjusting my exposure
until it looks good to my eye.
So... this is one of the advantages here about
using the mirrorless camera, as I can do
this if I was using a DSLR, I could also
put it in live view, what I'm doing is
I've got my live view set to basically
show me the exposure, as I'm gonna get it
as a final product. There we go.
That looks pretty darn good, okay, good
so that's fine right, he's the.. his face is
lit up, but it's not very dimensional right?
It's kind of flat, so I have over
here, we have to walk around the set.
I'll be back in a second guys, all right so
over here I have a DLED7, which is a
LED light clearly.
Fitted with barn doors... what I might do
is give him an edge or
separation light,
and this is the reason why I'm using this
light over here is...
because it's bicolor, and I'm gonna set
it to daylight balance, so that his edge
later, his back lay is gonna be cool, and
kind of cut him out right, and I'm
basically just gonna dial this down,
that's the color, so you guys can see the
color if I want to mess with it... I could
make it match, but I don't feel like
that's as strong, so for me dialing it up to...
let's do 55 to match it...
will be good and then I'm just gonna dial
my exposure in...
to where I think it looks good,
probably about right there.
I want to be a little bit hot,
he is Zeus after all...
Walk back around, let me take a look
through the camera... yeah that looks
pretty darn good, cool, cool, cool...
That gives him nice separation,
actually it's hitting the lightning bolt nicely
it's hitting his shoulder nicely, a little bit
on the the platform.. there,
his face looks lit up nicely,
everything was pretty good...
but I have another light,
and you know, why not use it when we
can add a little extra detail.
So what I'm going to do is...
I'm gonna come over here, and I've got
another one of these DLHM 300's here.
This one's fitted with the with the DP
2.1, which is the other projector.
This projector has built in framing shutters,
and I'll show you guys how that works.
Fire this up, I'm gonna aim it at the
word Zeus, and I'm going to use my
framing shutters..
to just bring that word in...
getting his toes a little bit,
which I don't really want...
so gonna move these in like that.
I want his toes too much...
tighten this up... just like that...
give me a little bit at the bottom there.
I think that's okay.
Yeah, okay, I don't want to be super
obvious with it.. I just want a little touch.
Move this in....yes it's all about
subtlety with this.
Nothing... and off... see...
what you want to do is,once you're
staring at it for a second..
you want to forget that you had even done it.
That looks pretty good...
Okay. So overall this is looking pretty nice.
I'm gonna look through the camera now. Again.
and I'm going to line it up.
I'm gonna refocus, yep, that
actuallys good, look at the camera position,
I'm gonna punch in here,
Moving up there he is..
just like when shooting people.
I'm gonna focus on the eye's okay?
Good, so I'm gonna take a shot like this,
see how we like it...
Nice.
Alright so now I'm Capture One.
I'll take a look, it looks a smidge dark.
it's definitely, definitely sharp.
Let's do this.
It's on 100%. Yeah that looks nice.
I like how it falls off, but then the Zeus still sticks
out, this looks good.
I have detail even here on the whites,
but yeah it looks a smidge dark,
so I think what I'm gonna do.
I actually like the amount of depth of field
I have, so since I'm shooting with a
constant light, I can just adjust my
shutter, and I'm gonna go down to a
50th, take another shot.
Here we go, that looks a little bit nicer
maybe somewhere in the middle, try 60 ...
yeah I like that, that's given me a nice
clean shot with plenty of detail and
everything.
They're cool, let's go here
let's go here, check our focus so you can
see right? Look at that.
Even there, the Zeus is actually
slightly out, so I mean if I want more
in focus, his eyes are perfect, I could
probably give myself, cause could tit up
slightly, so I could get myself more in depth.
I actually think that's fine, but
if, you you know, if you want it's easy
enough, now to just dial that in.
So I can come over here... let's say
I want to give myself... so I might have
five so I'll go... give myself two stops
so I know for to do that,
I can just now reverse that way.
The exposures should stay the same,
which it did, and we'll show you a little
more depth of field.
There we go Zeus, and he's sharp there.
In fact we can even, yeah, that looks
really good.
I'm liking it, so there you go.
So could I have just taken one light
or put it by the window and made a shot?
Yeah, but you know one thing about
shooting product photography is...
if you're trying to learn light, this is a
great way to do it.
Experiment right?
If you don't have all these different
lights like I have, think about why.
I'm doing the things I'm doing, you could be
using mirrors to bounce hard lights to
get little small spots.
You could be using cards to block light so there's
lots of different ways.
The better tools make it more efficient
and easier and certainly if you do this kind of work...
it can be super useful for you to do, and
using hot lights for this is fun,
fun because you can watch it and look at it,
and see what you're doing as you go
without having to worry too much about
you know, oh, what's the flash exposure...
I can literally just look at it on my
screen, and I know what its gonna look
like, and it looks great.
I think about color, think about composition..
think about how lights cut things off,
what you're going to use it for,
and that will help you create
kind of a cool product shot.
So be sure to follow me @DanielNortonPhotographer
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