I've been building a website slowly to help with the advertising of my existence here in Armenia, with intent on jumping into a rather diverse world for photography and videography. While over the past year and a half I have really been running around with the drone and capturing really unique perspectives of various industrial zones and developments, which will help with marketing towards that area, the one side that has been rather thin is the product photography side of things. Somehow, it's hard to find people to shoot in Yerevan, so I've taken to finding a way to build a commercial looking setup for various products at home. There is another difficulty present, however: I have no lighting gear here. It's something I'll have to jump into for more serious product photography down the line, but I still need to find ways to build the portfolio on the site anyway.
I have quite a bit of knowledge in how to address lighting from my filmmaking days back in England, and some of that has been quite useful, though there has been quite an extensive challenge with shooting indoors in natural and harsh lighting coming from one source: the window. Either shooting directly into the light or finding ways to manipulate it using a polarising filter I recently purchased to help reduce some of the glare in the images I take. I will be writing about that filter sometime later, with a post ready but void of enough images of what it actually does. More aimed at talking about gear since few do that here on Hive.
Well, these are some of the examples: today I shot some tea leaves with dried fuit, I had no backdrop to use, so I grabbed some old commie poster prints I have, flipped them upside down, and utilised the plain white of it to place the tea leaves on. Then moving them around in various positions, near the window where the natural sunlight comes in, while also testing a bit of fill coming from the phone. Though I don't think it really did anything, to be honest. Not bright enough to have much impact in bringing out the three-dimensional look of things. I shot on three different lenses with each image to see how it came out: the Sony 35mm, 85mm, and the Helios 58mm. I think the best shots came from the 35mm given the tighter space I was in, though I do want to experiment with the other focal lengths a bit more. I also shot at a relatively tighter aperture around F5.6.
This little experiment came out decently, though I think I need to return to it and try again, perhaps finding some other ways to pull out some more detail using some other light source. In some ways, these images can look a little flat. I've encountered a similar issue with other subjects I've wanted to shoot, coming out with some okay images, but also noticing that there's likely missing a bit of a highlight, something that really pulls the subject out. I've been looking into some smaller lighting equipment to solve that issue, though everything has to be imported given Armenia's poor photography situation. These small lights being portable but packing a bit of a punch, something to easily rig up and should solve that issue. Here are some additional examples of a jar of some Eastern European spread that I photographed, attempting to give it a more natural look with some greens that weren't in the best condition.
The polarising filter did a decent job at reducing some of the glare coming into the jar and removing some of the detail of what's inside, though I also had to pull some more of that detail out in post production, using Capture One to shift a few colours and make things stand out a bit more. Again, I shot on numerous lenses to try to find the right 'feel' for the images, though I think the 85mm stood out best in this situation, removing some of the background and providing more focus on the details. The Helios had a nice look to it, but from that distance it felt more like it was creating some distracting artifacts from the lens's general distortion and swirly bokeh, and that's not always something you want when you're trying to highlight a product, instead you want that sharpness and close up glimpse.
I do think the Helios has potential elsewhere, though. That bokeh can be quite attractive in giving something a more unique look. But perhaps doesn't translate well into product photography. Probably better off alongside something like fashion and portraits rather than food.