[Tonytee]

Focal Length @ 55mm, No flash and used CWA Metering.

My neighbor across the street came over and asked if I would mind taking a few shots of this watch. The watch belonged to her recently deceased uncle and was considering selling it on ebay. When I brought the watch into the house I was really impressed by it. It is a Germinal Voltaire, 14k gold Swiss Made Timepiece, so once I was back in my chair(after having fallen out of it, I did some snooping around on the Internet.) She, (my neighbor thought the watch was broken, because she could not get it to run. I pulled out the crown, set the time and wound it up approximately 50 turns. It has been running about 15 hours now and has not skipped a beat.

This is my first stab at product photography, so please feel free to offer suggestions. The watch was manufactured circa 1955.

Thanks so much for viewing.

Tony

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Last edited by Tonytee; 05-21-2017 at 11:32 PM. Reason: Grammar Error.

[bigoak]

So the thing about shooting a static subject like this, you have the benefit of being able to control the amount of light available through many means (e.g. flash, lamps, even a window). With this in mind, mount your camera on a tripod (or similar platform) and set the camera to manual exposure mode ("M") 2+ second shutter delay (to minimize camera shake), and a suitably slow shutter speed to "zero" your exposure meter (-3, -2, -1, 0, ...). shoot as low of an ISO as possible to ensure that you keep grain to a minimum. with live view, you can actually disable the autofocus, and zoom in to focus confirm tiny details of the subject (I would select the name of the watch in this case), and with a suitable aperture (e.g. F6.3-F11) to get some depth of field.


Boosting your ISO is not necessarily a good thing when you have the luxury of time and space to make this kind of photography happen. When you bump the ISO (signal amplification) you introduce noise and color artifacts that distract from your subject. Of course there are ways to use this creatively; test for yourself.


once you get the basics in line, try playing with lighting and composition to create a unique image that can best showcase the qualities of the subject in question. Perhaps get a good looking wrist to model this, or lay it in a single color satin sheet, really use your imagination (digital files are cheap).


Hope this helps


BO

[DeadJohn]

The color and sharpness is poor, in part due to extremely high ISO.

Use a tripod, manual mode, and 100 ISO. Set the shutter speed as slow as it needs to go. Use the 2-second timer, which has the helpful side-effect of disabling shake reduction on a tripod. Manual focus using zoomed in liveview.

Position a room lamp or flashlight if you want side lighting for interesting shadows. Experiment with the light position. Keep the watch and tripod in the same spot, and move the light a little between each shot to see what works and what doesn't.

Consider the background. The wood table grain distracts from the watch. Get closer if your lens will focus that closely (my recollection is that the 18-55 gets up to 1:3 magnification at 55mm), and use a uniform color paper or fabric as a background.

[Tonytee]

Awesome. I want to thank you both for taking the time and providing me with some very good helpful methods to improve.

Rgds,

TT