So I decided to make the most of the cold night and do some practice at still life/product shot type images.

Most went quite well, the onlt exception being the A3 which seems to have developed a strange blue cast and noise in the top corners? (other images are all fine)


Also, I'd like to hear people's guesses at the setup used (no cheating and looking at the Flickr set, there's a picture on there of the setup)

[hks_kansei]

Hmm, it seems they aren't quite as sharp as I hoped.

Am I correct to assume this is because of the high F stop? (I used F22 to give me the maximum depth of field, and the longest shutter)

[daacon]

Nice collection not sure on set up - you don't need to go to F22 for max DOF on a shot like this (can get into some diffraction at that point) as for sharpness flickr can lose some depending on what size you upload them.

[hks_kansei]

It was more to get me the longest shutter speed without overexposing.

I don't own any ND filters, otherwise I would have put one on and used a wider aperture.

[Na Horuk]

Well done, classical product shots. Good lighting, positioning of cameras, and post processing. The only thing I would say is that F22 is too much. You can use a DoF calculator and measure the distance to find the exact f-stop you need. Or you can just use F5.6. That should give you very sharp photos with that lens.

[LaHo]

Something similar can be achieved with a lighting table - one flash high from the front and one flash from below with the camera on a semi-transparent plate. The flash from below gets rid of any shadows ...

[hks_kansei]

I'll add the setup shot now.





I don't actually own any particularly great flashes, only an ancient AF160, and a Sigma EF530.
Neither of which have any manual modes to speak of (i don't have any remote triggers either)



the lighting for these shots was all done by hand (lightpainting) with the pair of LED torches seen in the setup shot.
Hence my need for a long shutter

[LaHo]

Your method seems to work quite well. Another approach: Two examples from a lighting table - flash from below a white, semi-transparent plate and with or without flash from above. Not my best work, but serves to illustrate the point. A gridded flash from below will result in a smaller circle of light on the lighting table: