Watch-photography, the making of a calendar

What camera do you use? This question is one I find in the mail quite a lot. Not that it really matters but I use a Canon 5D mark II & EF 180 F/3.5L Macro for most of my photos. What would be more interesting is to know HOW the picture is made. Wether you own a entry level or high-end camera the setup you use is more important imho. The camera doesn't make the scene, the setup does. You camera only takes a snapshot of it.

Recently I’ve been working on my 2nd watch calendar for 2012. I will show you how the photos for the ‘De Horlogefotograaf’ (dutch for the watchphotographer) calender 2012 were made. Before every photo shoot I make sure I have all equipment with me and everything is ready for use.



Besides the obvious there are multiple flashes, clamps, stands, umbrella’s, color gels, and various pieces of paper/foam-board. Not in the picture is my folding light box in which most photos were made. Since the flashes are used off camera they need to be triggered. In the center there’s a set of Cactus transceivers. The flashes I use are from Lumopro & Yongnuo. These are cheap full manual flashes and do just what I want them to do.

Since all the photographic needs are filled now I’d almost forget the most important ingredient we need.... Watches!



These will do!

So now it’s off to the ‘studio’ which is set up on the dining table. The basic setup where it all starts is the light box with a flash on each side of the light box. This picture shows the setup with props & watch in the light box.



Now it’s time to fire some test shots to find the right settings for the camera & flashes depending on the result you are trying to achieve. I always choose the lowest iso setting available to get the highest image quality. With each step up in iso more noise is added to the image. Since the camera is used with a tripod you can still get sharp images at slow shutter speeds. To avoid movement you can also use a wired or wireless remote.

After a few shots the settings are where I want them and it looks something like this.


This shot was made with the following settings: iso 50, 0,5 sec at f/8.0.

Now it’s time to work on the details of the watch. Since the dial & hands are rather dark we want to add some light to these parts. This is where the white paper comes in. The white surface acts as a great reflector and helps to add the extra light where you want it. Now the dial and hands look less dark. Notice how it also adds some nice light to the bracelet. With a polarizer filter the white glare on the glass can be reduced.



This trick with the paper can also be done with the case, bracelet or other parts of the scene. If you have a part that get’s to much light you can us piece of (translucent) paper to (partially) block the light or use a dark piece of paper to darken certain areas. This is how I play with the available light, checking the result on the camera after each shot. Live view can be helpful to see the effect of the adjustments you make right away.

Now we have a picture of the watch just the way I want it. But when I’m looking at the photo I realize it would be nice to add some more depth to the picture. Now Lets try something different. Out comes the third flash and it’s positioned against the bottle of Blue label to fire straight through the whisky giving the background that gold glow and adding some details to the bottle as well.



This extra detail really made the picture imho. Now it’s time to combine all adjustments into the perfect and final shot!

The same technique was used for the 1019 Milgauss. For this photo I traced a vintage multimeter to photograph the Milgauss on. After getting the right settings for this image it looked a bit flat with that dark background as you can see.



So to get some more depth into this picture I placed some pieces of copper behind the watch to light with the extra flash. You can see the parts in the background on the table. Notice how for this setup the light box is left open from the back and the watch is just lit from the left & right side by the flashes.



Since these small copper parts are quite far away they show up as blurry dots in the image adding that little extra to it.



Done!

The next step is processing the RAW file in a program like Lightroom or Aperture to fine-tune the image and pass it on to Photoshop for final editing. The crown (if necessary) is set to it’s normal position and dust and scratches are removed. It's amazing to see the amount of dust on a watch you cleaned just before taking the photos! Here’s a sample of removing dust from a cyclops. No matter how good you clean it there is always dirt around it. After editing it looks a lot better!




After finishing the photo’s in photoshop a calendar bar was added below the pictures and they were exported for offset printing. Since my calendar is all about the pictures I like to keep the calendar bar rather small. Doing this keeps the photos large enough for framing afterwards.



The calendar is printed in a whopping A2 size which is 42 x 59,4 cm or 16.5” x 23.4”. To give you a better idea what that looks like see how small my watch looks on top of it.



The entire calendar can be seen on my website where you can also order the 2012 calendar.

And now back to the beginning of this article. Remember that I mentioned that the camera doesn’t matter? I can produce the same images with an entry-level dSLR or even compact with a hot shoe but like I said, it’s more interesting to know the setup ; )

It helps me that photography is a hobby I invested in over the years. Instead of the flashes you can use one or more simple desk lamp(s) and a DIY lightbox to practice your watchphotography in. This is how my watch photography adventure also started.

Thanks for watching!

Bert | sBmRnR

Live Life!
De Horlogefotograaf



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2011 09:09AM by sBmRnR.