You hear it time and time again from photographer after photographer: get it right in the camera.  Many times, Photoshop and post-processing is viewed negatively, almost as if your inability to get the shot 100% perfect right off the bat means you are a horrible photographer.  Well, what happens when there is no way possible to get the shot exactly the way that you want it in camera?

This was a shot done for some printed collateral and it was done in an environment which provided several challenges to taking the shot.  To begin, there was no product table, cyc wall, or white paper available.  No strobes were available, only constant lighting used for video.  Also, there was limited space with several items that had to be photographed.  You can easily find yourself in a position like this and have a few options.  If you are lucky enough to find a shot you can use on a stock photo site it would save you a lot of headache.  The trouble with specialty shots is that despite catalogs as deep as iStockPhoto, you can still come up short when searching for what you really need.  The other option is to set it up as best as possible and work some post-processing magic.

I really wish I had taken a picture of the actual setup.  Explaining it really doesn’t do the “DIY” nature of this any justice at all.  A small round table was pushed up against a wall, and two large semi-reflective foam boards were set on top.  Without a cyc wall or product table, I wanted to create that effect but had nothing to really pull that off with.  I found an easel pad in the storage closet and taped several sheets on the wall, draping them down onto the foam board making a really, really rough cyc wall.  I brought two of the continuous lights over to blow the white out.  Thankfully these lights had barndoors on them which made it a little easier to place the light where I wanted.  A third light was handheld and boomed over the center, shot into a large softbox.

The results were….well…not impressive.  Did I mention I was shooting with a different camera?  I had a Canon 20D when I am used to shooting with a Nikon D700.  The 20D is not a bad camera, but when you are used to your own menu options, buttons, and features swapping to another camera and trying to shoot something quickly can get interesting. Not to mention an LCD half the size! So yes, there are times when you have to have an image but have little to no equipment that fits that type of shoot, making it almost impossible to get the image where you wanted it the first time out of the gate.

Anyway, on with the images.

So those are the two best shots (Taken at f/5, 1/40, ISO 200).  Yeah.  The best.  What was I thinking, right?  You can get an idea from those two shots how small of a space I was working with.

I knew shooting this that I would be working in Photoshop more than shooting.  So I was only focused on the products and making sure I had enough white space around them to work with.  I knew seems and other small blemishes would have to be corrected. I was not as worried about the softbox dipping into the photo a bit, or the black space under the foam board.  I could correct all of that later, along with the colors, blown out areas, and other needed fixes. Oh, did I mention that given the use of this image, I had to also remove any prominent brand names?

After some work in Photoshop, here are the same two images:

Recording a step by step for something like this would be difficult at best.  My goal first was to clean the image from anything but the products.  Then I made some other adjustments using levels, curves, and color balance.  The back part of the radio handle was blown out so that needed to be recreated, which I did using the other handle and copying it.  With that out of the way, I used the Dodge Tool to clean up the area around the product making sure it was pure white.  From there, it was a matter of removing any of the branding that needed to go, such as the first aid kit, emergency radio, water bottles, and snack bars. I did a screen capture showing the entire process from start to finish.  I sped up the recording in the essence of time, but the processing time for each image took just under 20 minutes.  The entire shoot, from setup, tear down, and processing took about 1 hour.

A quick little note about the video.  I tried using some new software (free software) on my PC rather than the usual setup I was running on my Mac.  The quality here suffered greatly in my opinion.  Partly because of the software but partly due to the conversion into the video editor.

Am I the best? Of course I am.  That is why you are reading this instead of writing your own blog post.  Seriously, though.  Not at all.  I am sure there are more efficient ways of doing what I did with the equipment I had on hand.  All I did was try to improve the product while getting rid of the crappy background.  Not rocket science.  In fact, if anyone has an suggestions, I am all ears.  I think I can live with the final result though.

I recently ordered an ABR800 and found another reason to love Alien Bees…  their boxes make for great DIY lightboxes!  I was reading a recent blog on how to create your own macro studio and thought, why not actually try it?  So I did.

Like any true photog & blogger combo would do, the entire process was documented.  First, I was reading the Strobist Blog which had some great information.  Mostly, I admire the DIY folks and stand in awe of their ability to achieve really great results from next to nothing.  But something struck me with this project, especially as it is something that I truly need.

The Strobist blog says that it cost them $10 (with a bit of a stretch).  Mine cost $1.  That of course is assuming that you have all of the items already, which I did.  I used the ABR800 box, which with the top flaps removed it was about 12” x 12” x 18” (if I remember correctly).  I also had some plain white paper from a large easel pad that was at work (the department was going to toss it out!).  We already had tape as well.  So really, I just needed some posterboard and then I would be set.  I ran up to Publix and got 2 sheets for $1, came home, and started cuttin’.

First, I have to admit that this took me two tries.  Normally I wouldn’t mention it except that the first time around I made the cutout too large so the box was too flimsy.  Also, I had cut the top, which I didn’t really need to do.  So before you get started, get a tape measure and also figure out which area of the box allows the box to sit most steadily.

Grab your measuring tape and measure out where you want to cut.  Given the size of my box, I measured out 1 ½” from the edge on all sides.  I cut out three sides but in reality, you could get away with cutting out the left and right sides.

Should you opt to cut all three sides, you should have something close to this:

Next, grab the paper (obviously you need to get something that will allow light to come through) and put it on the areas that were cut out.  I chose to put the paper inside of the box but I doubt it matters as long as light is allowed to come through.

I then took the posterboard, cutting it to fit the inside, and placed a sheet of it under the top panel of the box.  The Strobist blog made mention of that and how the reflective surface of the posterboard would help with the lighting inside of the box.  I then took the other sheet of posterboard and cut it to fit long ways. It was placed along the back and bottom panels, with the curve in the back similar to a cyc wall.

For shooting, that was rather simple.  For you Nikon folks, CLS works great here.  I placed a single SB-800 facing the left side of the box (TTL + 2).  The onboard was set to TTL -2 to put some light on the front of the object, but not too much.  I would have really liked to put another light on the right but didn’t have one handy to use.  Still, I was pleased with the result.  The below images were shot with a D80 and a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, hand held.

Here is the setup shot for the above images.

Total credit to the fine folks at the Strobist blog for this idea and their fine write-up.  It was really fun to try it myself and now I have something that is actually functional which only cost me a $1.  Can’t really beat that.