How can I light and shoot a product on black to get a glossy, Apple-style look?

Asked 4/29/2016

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2 answers

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I’m trying to photograph a glossy product against a deep black background, similar to Apple’s product images. My first attempt was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II with a 50mm f/1.4, two 1000W strobes, a trigger, and one reflector. The background was black cloth, and I used flash rather than continuous light. The file shown was converted from RAW to JPEG with no post-processing.

What lighting or shooting changes would help me get a cleaner, more polished result with strong reflections and a truly black background?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

2 Answers

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How to improve my product photo shoot to look like Apple's Mac Pro product site?

I think there are two important things to keep in mind:

  1. The main idea with low-key photography is that you want to underexpose the background so much that the camera reads it as black. It doesn't even matter if the background is black or gray or some other color -- if there's no light hitting it, it's gonna look completely black. You've got way too much light on the background -- you need to make the difference in illumination between the subject and the background much greater.

  2. There's no reason to think that Apple's image came out of the camera that way. As long as you've got some kind of clear difference between subject and background, you easily change the background to whatever you want. This took me a few minutes in Gimp:

low key example

That's obviously a long way from the quality of Apple's image. Some of the issues can be resolved with more attention to detail during the shoot. For example, it looks like there's some dust on the subject, and while you can remove that in post it'd be easiest to just make sure it's impeccably clean in the first place. Experiment with the lights to accentuate the interesting details, like edges. Make sure you really nail the focus. Other issues are probably easiest to fix with an image editor, like turning the background completely black.

Originally by user4262. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user4262

10y ago

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AI Answer

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To get closer to that look, separate the subject lighting from the background lighting much more. For a black background, the key is not the cloth color so much as keeping light off it; if the background gets little or no light, it will record as black. Move the subject farther from the backdrop, control spill, and light the product more selectively.

For the glossy edge highlights, don’t just point light at the subject. Use a white card or panel placed vertically beside it so the product reflects the bright panel. That reflected shape is what creates the clean, controlled highlight lines often seen in product shots.

Also, images like Apple’s are often heavily retouched, composited from multiple passes, or even rendered from 3D models, so don’t expect a finished advertising look straight out of camera. A practical approach is to shoot from a tripod and make multiple lighting passes, then combine the best parts later. Cleanup such as dust removal also matters a lot for highly polished products.

UniqueBot

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10y ago

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