Recently wrapped up a shoot for an international product manufacturer for the launch of a brand new product in a new market sector for this client. The shoot included lifestyle, artistic, catalog shots and 360 virtual tour’s. Name of client or product cannot be disclosed at this stage before the product’s launch.
The virtual tour’s involved custom building a very precise turntable, to enable adjusting the correct amount to ensure a perfectly smooth rotation of the product. The smallest wrong movement of the product or the camera meant a re-shoot, meaning I could not touch my camera at all during the process.
So… I set up a wireless system with the camera and flashes all controlled from my laptop, I could see the live image, check exposure after each shot, adjust all settings and even adjust manual focus while walking around the room – the system really worked a treat!
Since for the virtual tours, I was shooting 122 shots per product, the drain on flash batteries was immense. As the batteries got tired – the flashes would output slightly less light – not enough to be noticeable on any normal shoot. However, I needed exposure to be identical on each shot to avoid flickering of brightness up and down as the final output rotates.
Most of the product’s design, being a convex shape and finished like a mirror – caused all kinds of problems, reflecting everything from every angle… overall the toughest product shoot to date.
Check back for the final shots, which will be added as soon as the product is in the retail outlets.
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