Heroes and Free Time.

Two strobes, black cartolina, a black tile, color gels, seven hero themed USB flash drives, some free time and a smartphone.

I needed to take a photo of these superhero themed USB flash drives

The concept was simple. I just wanted the USBs illuminated from below and just have a colored rim light on a black background. And what better way to light a small product from below than to put it directly on the strobe. I thought the lamp of the strobe would look cool as a lighted stage for the products.

The setup

I put the strobe on the lowest possible setting which was 1/128,  and a colored 1/4 power snooted strobe on the left back side of the product.

I think I was using 1/180 at f22 ISO400, I made sure that my aperture was small and had a fast shutterspeed so that the background would be pure black.

Final Product

And it was boring.

There was something missing, it was too plain for my taste. I wanted energy for the shot, so I grabbed my smartphone and googled their logos for backgrounds. My plan was to lightpaint the logos on the background using  my phone.

I was experimenting on how aluminum foil would fair as a reflector since I needed one on top of the product. I needed the light  from the strobe below to also bounce from above, giving additional light to the subject.. It didn't really work though, I still liked using folders as reflectors. 

Lightpainting is a technique that requires a very slow shutterspeed, low ISO, preferably a small aperture and a very dark location. The basic idea is to open the shutter for some seconds and literally paint light onto the sensor. Google it, the internet can explain better.

So I turned off the light, readied my phone and started.

The camera was set at f22 and about 10" shutterspeed, with 100 as ISO. I turned off the triggers and put the strobe below at S1 setting, optical slave mode, still at 1/128. The other one was still at 1/4 but this time, I needed to control the strobes manually. After I "paint" the background using my phone, I need to press the test button on the snooted flash to fire the strobe below. All in under 10 seconds.

It's a hit-miss kind of thing.

This was a test, I wanted to see if it would work.

Here are the hits.

 

As usual, a little saturation boost and a play with curves in photoshop and it's done!

Sidenotes:
- Must find a better application for the aluminum foil theory. It's too much of a handy thing not to use in photography.
- More strobes, the better.
- Let x = strobes.

If x < need == 1;
else
 "You need more folders or BUY MORE STROBES."