Hi, I'm Karl Taylor, and Hi I'm Urs Recher. Welcome to another broncolor
how-to video now Urs, it looks like you've dug your pink floyd record
collection out here? No Pink Floyd I've left home, these
that took something else. Right, so it looks like a product shot of some
headphones and stylizing it, building a set with some vinyl discs in there. Talk
us through your set up here, please. Okay so the main light, we probably have to
start from the back, the main light is a Siros 800 with an L40 reflector and
the narrow grid. So a narrow grid and it's coming through some diffusion material?
Exactly, it's just an acrylic plate, matte side down, and I placed this in a way
that we get a nice halo around the... - Around the headphones? Exactly.
So that halo will be emanating off of the vinyl? Yes exactly.
It gives nice edges so shows the shape and texture of the LPs and
as well it basically it's the main light as well for their headphones itself. Okay
but there are two more lights plus a few extra little accessories. Exactly, the light
shapers are actually quite basic so it's to show that you
do not always need super fancy light shapes to make a high-end product
shot, so it's just normal reflectors grids and the small softbox.
So no other fancy Pico projection attachments? No, this we'll come back to later on.
Let's break this shot down one light at a time starting with maybe your backlight
and then we can see what each one's doing. We also just pointing out,
we're shooting on the medium format with the Hasselblad 120 mm macro lens
which is equivalent to about a 100 mm macro lens in 35 mm format
so perfectly achievable on 35 mm equipment as well. Okay. Good so these are
switch off so it's only the one I've been talking about before
normal reflector with narrow grid and of course very dark but it can
already see that we get nice texture you know all
the atmosphere is there and that the black object is surrounded by this halo.
Black on black is always tricky so this is bringing that beautiful... I really love
the texture in the vinyl here seeing the grooves and the tracks and the
reflections and that's all just from the one back light coming through
the diffusion material. The bigger this light
becomes, the bigger the reflection. So that's light number one,
let's look at light number two but without light number one, please.
Switch this one on already and we switch this off. The second one is a
softbox coming from the side it's a smaller softbox of course it's
always about adjusting more or less the size of the light over to the size of
the object so if I have a tiny object, I take a smaller
softbox and if I fire this you will see that this actually brings more like the
main light from the side. So, this is light two but on its own without light
number one, but what's really interesting here for me is this
beautiful gradation that you've achieved down here We are using just the standard
equipment but with just this little black cardboard that I
placed quite close to the object I can flag off some of the light so let's take this away
and if I shoot it now you will see that the light it's much more boring.
Yes absolutely that's amazing so that tiny little velvet flag black
velvet flag is just shielding creating a shadow that's the bottom half of that face.
And when they get close this shadow is sharper when I take
it further away this shadow slowly disappears again. The
position of this little black thing is crucial as well for the quality of the
light - adjusting this it will go further down greater.
When this shows you just how creative you can be by using little homemade
accessories. As you know, mirrors, little cardboard,
flags, it's fantastic Right now talking of mirrors,
you've also got a couple of mirrors in there are those mirrors operating from
this light? No, they are operating from this one,
the first one here in the back is responsible for the reflections I get
on the vinyl in the top right
hand corner there. It was too bright because this is
more or less like the main light so the reflection was too bright so that's why
there is a gray filter. Got an ND gel it's an ND3 Gel so it
takes off one F-stop. Let's take a shot without the gel just to show the difference.
So it will be too dominant but when I put in
front of it, it's like a two f-stop reduction of the light and
because it should not be that the main focus now it's very weak.
So the mirror at the front, what is that one doing? We have in here it's a lot of
black so this is just a fill-in light for this dark area. So on the photo that's?
It's actually in here otherwise it would be too dark and fading away.
Let me block the mirror with this black card and let's
just see the difference on what you've got so far
Wow it's all absolutely going down there so that's
all from the mirror. If the mirror is on again. And these are
just little convex makeup mirrors. Right, now that's light number two
let's turn that off take a look at light number three please. I'll turn light
number three on. So this is just a normal reflector
coming from the left at about three F stops below the two main lights
and just gives some nice accents on the left is some highlighting
and then actually these highlights they fade away and then the mirror takes over.
Okay so let's now go into all three lights combined and we can take a
look at I guess close to the final shot maybe just a few little tweaks needed
and see what we get.
Wow, there we go. So that's the combination of all three lights all
those little details being revealed beautifully there lovely little
gradients textures and as you said a difficult subject black on black but
you're isolating it and lifting it when with light in the
specific areas. But actually quite interesting if I go we up with
this softbox just a little little bit just a few centimetres up you will see
that there the texture here will have a huge much more power
Yes, so which one do you prefer? That one or the one before? I think the
one before I think it's - it's really attracting already yeah that were just
it's really about 2 centimeters, just take it down 2 cm, shoot
it again and immediately I have an f-stop less here yeah so it's super precise
Excellent well I think that's a wonderful result
there with a three light setup and it demonstrates really clearly how you can
actually accomplish a very high-end product shot but with very basic,
minimal equipment. You just have to know what you do with it. Well I
hope you enjoyed that how-to video another great example from Urs on
product photography I'm Karl Taylor and I'm Urs Recher, thank you very much for
watching we'll see you next time.