 Andrea |
Lighting setup for product photography The clothes are shot on a model, with the head not showing, just the body and the clothes, against a white backdrop. The company wants the backdrop to appear super bright white on their website. So, what I'm having to do with every single shot in Photoshop is fill in the backdrop with the pain bucket set to the whitest white. This works fine with darker items and colors, but alot of their product is white, so I'm having to draw with the lasso tool around the body or the accessory, then select inverse for the background, and fill the background with the paint bucket. Then go back and clean up around the edges of the body/clothes. The lighting setup I use for this shoot is a strobe on each side of the model. Should I point a strobe towards the backdrop as well? Will that make the backdrop appear whiter in the final image? What do you suggest to bring out the backdrop, so it appears as white as possible without washing out the model/clothes/accessories? I've attached a before and after shot. Thanks.
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Mark Feldstein |
OK, turn off the fixit dohickey in photoshop and shoot it so you don;t have to fix anything. What you're essentially referring to Andrea, is called "high key" lighting. You need to wash out the background. First, you have to make sure your background (bg) is truly white not some designer color variation of white. Then, you need to move your subject off the (bg) to get some separation from it. Blast the bg at 45 degree angles to the center with at least TWO lights with large reflectors say 10-14" or so, one from each side, set to be about 2-3 stops hotter than your subject lighting. When you set your bg lights, you may see the light feathered or tapered to the outside edge. That's ok as long as you can maintain that 2 stop difference throughout the area that will actually be behind your subjects. You can use the modeling lights to see what's going on and then test the set-up with a flash meter to determine the evenness of the illumination on the bg. Look for hot cool, or just dead spots and adjust your lights accordingly. You may even find you need a couple of reflector panels to control spill, i.e., being careful not to let the bg lighting reflect back (or spill) to your subjects or into the camera lens. Another reason to move them away from the face of the bg. If you do want to backlight or "fill" the backs of your subjects to give them more depth and a bit more bg separation, then I'd light them separately. My choice is to rig either an umbrella or two, a strip bank softbox or 2, or even a single full size softbox to light them. Any spill will just disappear into your hotter bg. Softboxes and umbrellas of course, diffuse and tend to wrap the subject with light which I find usually eliminates the need for any back lighting on them. Careful to avoid producing shadows with your main. Try that on for size and see how it fits. :>)
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