Photographing Glasses and Bottles

We've been asked by a few prospects to show them sample images that we took of reflective objects. We figure that we'll just post a shot we took for a fellow friend, owner of Vintagio winery, which he promptly used for his business card.

The biggest challenge for 99% of product photographers out there are photographing reflective products such as bottles, glasses and especially spheric items. It's really because with these surfaces, you'll see the reflection of anything and everything around the object, the sky, windows and even the photographer and his/her camera! The worst thing to do is to use the on-camera flash that creats a hotspot on the reflective objects.

The distractions are avoidable by surrounding the glass object with a surface that you want to see, such as white board or plastic. It'll help tremendously to create the perfect glass or bottle imagery you want.

- Michael Soo

Creative photos with creative filters

I was recently bitten by the slow shutter bug. As you may have noticed from some of my work such as, the previous blog posting, Feb 2007 issue and the most recent June 2009 (page 58) issue of of Popular Photography magazine. All of them using ND filters, at times, stacked with a polarizer.

Recently, I discovered the Singh-Ray's Vari-N-Duo filter, which I am now packing with me in my bag of goodies.

The interesting part of this filter is that I've been sandwiching a polarizer and 1-2 3-stops ND filter in the past few years of my life, with the polarizer being a slim version. This filter single-handedly remove those 2-3 filters from my bag of filters. Although I wouldn't call it a slim filter, it's pretty easy to handle and adjust.

As you may already know, sandwiching a combo of filters has its pains. Whenever I need only the polarizer, I'll need to unsandwich the filters. Then, there's the handling of three filters instead of one. More surface area exposed to dust, dirt and smudges.

So, the Vari-N-Duo solves all that issue. On top of that, it allowed polarizing effects (really great for waterfalls, reduce glare and reflections in your shots) and slows down the shutter for up to 8-stops!

The drawbacks? It's a thick filter (size of 3 filters put together), can cause some vignetting and it can be an issue fitting into some bags. However, since I'm using the 1Ds3 to shoot, I have plenty of pixels to play with. Thus, I often shoot wider than normal to allow myself cropping opportunities. Having that in mind frees me from having to worry about the vignetting. I'm also using a bag that fits 6 filters. So, there are definitely enough room for me to fit this baby in.

- Michael Soo