Lessons

Lesson Info

Basic Tabletop Setup and Gear

this is a table top set up and you can see how small a place that we're working with here and we like to keep it simple when I go into do shoot tabletop I like to have all my stuff set up that I'm going to use because I hate to break concentration you know like when you're reading a novel or reading something and the phone rings and breaks concentration my studio is big it's a big space it's comparable to this space and so if I have to stop and walk all the way over there to get a fill card and come back it breaks my concentration so before I start shooting tabletop in still life I'll get out all the stuff I generally use like normally so to speak and get it ready whether I use it or not it's not really important and that that lessens the trip back over to the other side of the studio where all my stuff is to get stuff so I like to start out table table just a simple table you nose tabletop tyree nothing special there um I start out generally with one light I add many more but I start ...

out with one and this is my main light or what I would sometimes call my ambient light or my main reflective light putting on the surface or thing that I'm photographing I use it on a boom I want to keep things away from this table is much as possible and have just the table with the lights coming into it I mentioned I'm a drummer all my cymbals air on booms so if you've ever seen a drum set with symbol on all my because all my stands there way out there and all that's around my set or my cymbals same way with this um the uh the tool I'm starting out with here is a two foot square soft box and it's just it's going to be fine for the product I've decided to kind of shooters which is these kind of old fashioned keys here on a little ribbon we're goingto do something with those and see if we can make it sparkle a bit um and in a lot of little things that I want to go through some of the props and the tools that I used to make my life easier if you no I'm talking about when I got a bunch of these this one's brats but I've got probably ten of these little gorilla someone called gorilla gorilla pods I love these things because you can set up a little you can put a stand topper on this and use a strobe right down on the set if you want to but I'll use him to lean things against I can lean a little board against them very easily like this not having go anywhere if you really don't want to have a go anywhere you take a little piece of tape curl the tape put at the bottom lean it against your grill apart it doesn't move things about uh this type of photography that you have to be aware of is that things move all the time and so you're gonna make it so they don't move and yes there is a tendency to say well I don't want to take a moment to go and get that little loop of tape I know I know there is trust me do it get the little loop it tate make three or four and put him here because if you don't something's going to crash down this one's going to fall over knocked that one over which knocked that one over and now you're having to re set it up so I'm working with these little things are great I shoot tethered we'll take a second to tell you why and I really stress to all of you to shoot tethered when you're doing this kind of stuff you want to see that picture when it comes back you want to see it we don't use polaroids anymore back in the day we would go through boxes of polaroids way don't do that anymore we use the digital back it's not chimp ing when you're working this way it's digital polar it's okay you're adding a light seeing what it does maybe it's too strong pull it back a little bit we're doing the same thing with the tethered computer as we did with polaroids in the old day except for one thing it's not costing us an arm and a leg he used to do so that's an important thing and there's so many ways to do it these days with all the little soft was the little cards I fi cards you could get a knife I card and go into your ipad you get a knife fight card go into your uh your iphone for that matter you know the f I card will go into almost any computer doesn't even matter and at least you could then bring it up in photo shop it was thie images on your card you could bring it up in photo shop I have to go through a few steps but I shoot tethered and I shoot into capture one uh you've used the cannon version that comes with the candid cameras for years and now light room I think since light room three sense light room three you can shoot tethered in tow light room I didn't and if I don't use light room for much of anything but I do use it when I'm shooting tethered if I'm not shooting capture one and no I do not have capture one on all my laptops I've got it on one laptop because only paid for one license and the other laptop I use light roman so if I'm doing this kind of work I'm doing capture one if I'm out shooting with my little mac book I'm using light room so no excuse these days at this point really there's no excuse not to shoot tether if you've got a laptop or a computer in your office you've got to be shooting tethered um almost everybody has light room and an I fi cards only like what fifty bucks thirty bucks I don't what it is it's not expensive get that stuff up on the screen if you can't see it on the screen you're gonna be disappointed because what did I say earlier detail detail detail you just can't see it on the screens the backs of these cameras so I'm always sitting with my with my tether computer here we're standing and all I put my clamps on here I have in my studio got a lot more little of the little bitty clamps I'll have those right along the front here so I can simply grab him and work I do not want tohave multiple tables set up because I'm clumsy not because of any philosophic reasons at all I knock stuff over okay so the fewer little things set up is possible that's fine I've got a rolling credenza that I picked up at a garage sale so like old fashioned business credenza with the doors on the front and I have tons of stuff on my gels and everything are in that credenza and I can roll it out onto the studio floor and worked with it so I'll have a credenza here my table top monitor here and my shooting surface everything's kept really really tight uh someone asked yesterday about shooting touching the camera when I'm shooting I don't actually fire the camera from the computer that way not touching the camera I love live you uh cameras cameras that have have live you because you khun set your shot up as you're working with the live you before you get into a situation of of uh you know having to bend down you know it was great when you're twenty five when you're sixty doing this all day long I stand up here and look through that through the monitor that way you can really really have a lot of fun with it plus with live you you could get your camera into places that you may not have thought about if it's up against your hair your face think about that for a second way have all this technology in this camera right and it's only usable in one spot slammed up against our face that's a flaw to may that's that's like there's got to be some other way we can use our camera other than just glue it to our face it seems like we've got all this a great technology but we're still stuck with this maybe I don't know flip out screens can be pretty cool I love him that's why I bought this camera that flip out screen gives me a lot of information from angles and places I normally wouldn't wouldn't go so this is our basic set and we use a lot of cards and different things so I got this I'm sorry internet I do not remember the brand that this was all I could tell you was it was so darn cheap on amazon I thought oh why not it was like twelve dollars seriously I bought one and then I got it and thought let's watch about to and I got him and I think that's pretty cool so about two more they do one thing and one thing only is that is they mount here and they hold a card and you place the card and you can get the card where you want it without standing coming up from the back or being involved with it any type of thing you could make these d I y if you want but you want to create some of these way could probably do with pvc pipe couldn't wait you know pvc pipe coming out two clamps over here to hold it but you want to get your your cards we've got this we have such cool reflector holders yes they're called reflector holders good good good question so you khun use these all different ways and of course there's this little guy here which is a manfro dough for those of you are going to ask this little guy here and again this was a very inexpensive item was like under twenty bucks but it'll allow me to get a strobe out here and the stands way back here it's not up it's not a boom it's kind of a little arm that you could kind of twist around get get it to fit places where you might not have been able to get something before never had one of these back in film days never had one uh really like it I use it a lot and uh and like everything that I buy whenever I buy this stuff by to um maybe one is a backup kiss one breaks but eventually you end up using it you know so my rule for this is how many do you need of these one more than you have no that was stan sorry um all those rules mixed up uh regular old stands are fantastic this is a just my loom a pro to brand to companies make these things uh I like them for one reason they're very small easy to carry on location I do a lot of product worked on location lots of product work on location and I love the fact that you can take the bottom of it here and you can take it way down to a flat bottom so it doesn't stick up where you can trip over it or something so when you're doing table tops you can get it in very very close to the table without the the arms like on a stand like this to see how if it was a low table you could only get it in this close because these legs come out with these flat out legs you could do that now I don't normally shoot it like that with it if I'm on location shooting people are something like that I actually have a nice triangle to it because that's when it's the most powerful standing up so clamps everywhere uh another one of those little boom things this is also a loom a pro and which is made by the guys it impacts and they have some goodies to give away two later today so uh matter of fact I believe we're giving a couple of little boom arms away um this's a great little tool it is a reflector holder as well as its gotta stand topper on it so you can put a little light out on here I use it a lot for speed lights I will never put a pro photo that they did that but for speed lights that works great and so you khun you know those sometimes serve double duty so you can clamp your scream on here and have a scrim here and then have a speed light with a snoot or something out there just alittle sidelights into all kinds of multiple things with it but this thing will full right up and goes in my travel bag it's light and it's easy and how many do you need to when you buy this stuff by two seriously you save on shipping almost everything that you buy you save on shipping because they're only charge is a little bit more for the second one but you're always going to need to uh to pretty much everything except house of black one for each ferrari so that's kind of the space and you can see what is this uh working space here is maybe eight by ten so if you have a bedroom or off uh den or a kitchen or living room or something you could roll the couch out of the way and certainly set up and start doing this kind of work keep everything as close as possible can I get one of those super clamps I get it I use a lot of super clamps this is not the type of super clamp I use I generally used the the black man photos on guy have like eight of them and probably need to get maura I use them all the time but you could build a boom out of this with this stand and a piece of pvc through this side and you've got a little boom hooked up uh these air these one things that kill my travel cause I can't work without him and they're heavy so you start packing eight year in your suitcase and you pretty much got one pair of socks left that's it that's all the way you got left so I love him so I I generally end up renting those when I go on far locations