Menz Crownmints have been a South Australian icon for many years and got the opportunity to shoot some new product pics for them as they prepare to launch the new packaging. I wanted a really clean and modern look to the images to suit the new brand identity as well as their goals for the brand as a whole. The images were shot entirely on location in their boardroom and i would like to thank James from Marketing for making sure we were not interrupted and for his valued input during the shoot.
My goal was to achieve a sense of realism while maintaining sharpness throughout the shot.
Product photography can be very challenging especially when dealing with highly reflective subjects. Minimising reflections is once of the most critical focus points of a commercial product shot, or depending on the desired outcome, placing those reflection in the right place can also be very effective.
Photographer’s notes:
The shoot was intense as i only had about 45 min to shoot it, including setup time. So the initial focus was to get the setup done and tweaked so that i would only have to focus on the individual packages and posing them and not on lighting. This approach will not only save you time, but also keep you sane while you shoot.
Equipment used:
Camera: Canon 5D MKII
Lens: Canon 50mm f1.4 USM
Lighting: Canon 580exII
I chose the 50mm because i wanted to maintain a “human eye” perspective on the shots. The last thing you need is wide angle distortion in a product shot as it will be very obvious and will spoil the outcome or waste time in post production trying to remove it later.
Lighting was achieved by using two Canon 580exII flashes. I chose to use them for their size as well as ease of use and how fast i could actually set them up. Triggered with Elinchrom Skyports, i use this setup for most of my shoots and i have found it to work really well.
In Addition to the basic equipment, i also used two brand new battery packs i recently acquired through BH in their second hand department which i will do a full review on as soon as i have had a few more shoots with them to judge the actual performance. So far, i’m very impressed and will recommend them to anyone wanting battery packs for their flashes. Watch this space for the actual review.
Comments and feedback:
Questions or comments? Leave a comment below, and let me know what you thought of the images.
Wow! It seems to me that you have added plenty of extra info; I can tell that behind this piece of writing lies some solid research. The truth is one can rarely find today blog posts, which are qualitative rather then quantitative, if you see what I mean. Well done, and I cannot wait to read more!