Product Photography Lighting Tips

[Mike Quill]

I was recently hired to produce a series of Instagram videos for Lavazza Coffee. Part of the promos required me to shoot stop motion like recipe videos featuring lots of clear glasses and liquids and hands coming into frame and adding/removing items. I decided to shoot the objects on black/shiny Perspex aka plexiglass (sourced on Canal St in Manhattan for about $120 for a 4x8 sheet): http://canalplastic.com). I had never really lit glass/liquids in a studio setting before, so I did a little research and found this great tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIm-SZHKOW4I pretty much recreated this exact lighting set-up, except my backlight was an Arri 1k in a small chimera and a 650 book light as my fill, both pushing through a 5' role of tracing paper. I also used a 2', 500w batten strip for the backdrop.Overall I'm happy with the results for the first attempt. It would be interesting to hear other people's experiences with this kind of lighting setup. Any tricks of the trade would be great to hear about.I'll share more clips as I get into the edit (open them in a new tab to see higher quality). Shot on Epic Dragon w/ skin tone olpf and my Vivitar Series 1 "Bokina" 90mm F2.5 Macro: http://makingnottaking.blogspot.com/2009/10/vivitar-series-1-90mm-f25-vmc-12-bokina.html. For anyone who needs a good macro, consider this lens! Super sharp, great build quality and has amazing bokeh. And cheap too! I bought mine mint for $400 with the 1:1 Diopter.