Went and baught my wife a gift. She wanted pictures of it, so....

I am still struggling with off camera flash. In this case I used a 430 EX in ETTL mode mostly camera left firing at the subject (45 degrees), probably 3 feet away with the camera about the same distance away. There was a northern facing window about 6 feet behind camera as well for natural light.

I know I need to fix some of the vertical lines, but any other pointers people can provide would be great. Maybe how I could have gotten the flash to work better for me.

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7. My son wanted to help and obviously didn't wash his hands very well after painting.



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They look good. A few suggestions. The white balance looks off, or you're not using a white backdrop. This was distracting to me because everything looks yellow. You can also see reflections of either you or something else in the ring in the last and second to last photo.

Also with reflective object, the flash will reflect off the object as it is. So a square softbox will make a square reflection (bright spot), a umbrella will make a round bright spot, a beautydish or reflector will do the same. I'm not sure what types of light modifiers you have at your disposal, but this is one thing to keep in mind while doing highly reflective product photography.

Since you're only using one flash, I would suggest using a couple white pieces of foam board or paper, and bouncing the flash off them to get rid of those shadows on the first two photos.

Your composition is nice and the white balance is an easy fix in PS. Your wife must be very happy for such a nice gift!

 

I tend to forget about bouncing. I need to get some foam core to keep around for more of these types of things. White balance also tends to be a weakness of mine, so I will go back to this or something similar in order to see what I can do to improve. Thanks for the feedback.

 

Definitely get some white foam core, also if you dont have any modifiers bouncing off a low white ceiling works pretty well. Another thing you can try is using a tripod and taking a longer exposure then with the flash set to a lower power move it around to a few different areas and trigger it by hand, it'll take a few tries but you can get some good results.

Most of my more recent product shots were taken with only one speedlight and white foamcore to fill in shadows:





Of course the 57" brolly helps soften the light but you can achieve a very similar result by bouncing off a white wall or shooting through a white bed sheet.

 

$15 home depot clamp lamps with tissue paper would work too if you needed another light source. I would know cause I'm the cheapest fool around town.

 

I picked up a starter light set, 2 stands, 2 lights, 2 umbrellas, but haven't had a chance to play with it yet. Portal2 has been keeping me occupied. I think I'll try them out tonight though.

 

Where did you get that? I was thinking about picking up a beginner set as well before I decide to drop $$$$ on some Alienbees, etc

 

amazon has a bunch of starter sets for very very cheap.

not bad, fix the balance and if you can't figure out how to not be in the reflection grab a long lens and get as far away as you can, minimizing your reflection

 

I picked up my kit from Ritz in Countryside Mall. Nothing big, but something cheap to at least get me started on figuring things out and to help me determine if more/better is actually needed for my photography.