Product photography - Nikon N80

Nikon N80 - long time since last time I used it. Film cameras had this excitement in them - especially while waiting to get prints.
Anyway I found it on my shelf and decided to take some product pictures - the goal was to get pictures similar to one Carl-Zeiss advertise their cameras and lenses.

Setup:
Just one light - SB-900 bounced into umbrella, bit on the left of camera. Simple isn’t it? but in this case the most happened in post-production.

Post-production:
First of all was to process RAW file into PSD using lightroom (always shoot RAW!).
Opened Photoshop and made fallowing adjustments:
- add High Pass Filter
- add vignette
- play a bit with curves
- cleanup dust and other things that distract viewer from product
- add Gradient Map with ~10% opacity (picture gets a nice colour cast)
- last thing is to scale down image and apply Smart Sharpening Filter with small values (like: amount: 30%; radius: 0.3pix) - remember when you scales down your image, you loose sharpness!

Here is GIF with 2 pictures: before and after PS

First Post

Recently had a chance to take some location pics (Glasgow) of Rachel and Leigh-anne.
Whole session was struggle with bad weather - mainly wind which was knocking down my light stands. Second think is that my SB-80dx’s SU-4 mode (triggering by camera build-in-flash) failed to synchronise with SB-900, so I was forced to use only one light.
Lesson learnt and I’ve already bought flash radio triggers and when it comes to weather… oh well it was my own choice to move to Scotland.

SETUP:
As mentioned only one light used - bounced by Lastolite 80cm white umbrella - as close to model as possible, slightly on the left. Flash setup between full-half power.

Why setup your umbrella as close to model as possible you ask?
- you get nicer (softer) light
- more power from the flash - look at Inverse-square law
- or you use less power on flash = more flashes from one set of batteries
- bigger catch light in the models eyes


Leigh-anne
(Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @17mm; f13; 1/200sec; iso200)

Leigh-anne2
(Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @36mm; f4; 1/800sec; iso200)

Rachel
(Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @38mm; f4; 1/800sec; iso200)