When Stephen Segal approached me to put the Nikon Z6 mirrorless through its paces, I thought that the various requirements of the day to day creation of media for a hotel, spa, bar and restaurant would be the ideal testing ground.
Everything needs to happen fast, from production to publication. All the deadlines are “last week, Tuesday” and its a myriad of scenarios with various lighting conditions.
So… this is how we do it.
Belgravia Gin
Our new venue is doing a low-key event with Halewood, the distributors of the Belgravia range of gins and the Hall & Bramley mixers, and we need to create the social media posts, inviting and enticing new customers to try new flavours.
Gone are the days of G&T’s your grandma used to drink… (Madam & Eve, anybody?!) Gin is the new Martini. It’s as cool as James Bond and we need to carry through the “coolness” of Gin, with the casual space of Pashash, in the heart of a 4-star Hotel.
We did not have all the new flavours yet, which was a blessing in disguise, as it made the setup so much easier. I could “imply” that there are multiple flavours without having to make each distinguishable.
Key points:
- Glam up the product line
- Keep the nostalgia of the Moroccan Industrial feel – Old Style
- Sell the mood: “I want to go there!” & “I want to try that!”
Setup:
The setup was simplicity itself. Bottles and mixers on a wooden table in various configurations. Lighting was with an LED Ring-Light used completely wrong… Toned way down, encircling the products, It gave just enough light to give me shiny highlights, make the label light, and above all, add a glow to the bottles.
Now we just move the bottles around a bit so that most of the ring light is hidden (although you can still see the light shining through on the left edge of the label) and a bit too much light on the front bottle… no problem, I simply put my hand over the light.
By using an extra light source, my ambient light could be dropped way down, so even though we were shooting in the middle of the day, my backgrounds could be toned way down, only popping some highlights. So with the dark background, shadow to light on the label leading the eye and shooting with the Nikkor S 24-70 f/4 at f/4, the shallow Depth of Field helped to keep the focus on the brand name.
Start to finish, about 15 minutes with 4 or 5 variants created for alternative images for marketing. Slight retouch (rookie error… fingerprints on the bottle) and colour grading plus an aftermarket lens flare, and we were done.
Takeaway:
Most jobs that we do as photographers do not have the cash budget or time budget to create elaborate setups. Get in, shoot the product, get out. In that sense, the Z6 performed extremely well, even though it was literally the first shot taken with the camera (except the obligatory shot of my right foot to make sure everything on the camera works 😜)
