Step by step photo: iPod Mini

Some months ago I shot this photo of my iPod Mini.
I wanted an advertising-style image, one you could find in an Apple brochure. I am quite satisfied with the result, considering that the tools I used weren’t professional ones.
This is a short explanation of how I arrived at the final result.
Although it’s a good image (at least for me it is) I used a very poor setup.
For this image we need:

• An iPod Mini (or whatever you like to photograph)
• A table :)
• Camera with telephoto lens (I used my Sigma 70-200, at 160mm) for squeezing the perspective and have a more blurred background
• Tripod
• Sheet of white and smooth cardboard, about 50x70 cm (about 20x28 in). This will be our background and cover the table.
• Some sheets of printer paper
• A light source (I used a table lamp, with a 40W light bulb)

We start positioning the white cardboard on the table and bending it gently to create the background. It doesn’t need to make a sharp bend, otherwise the border will appear in the final image, and will be very difficult to remove.

Turn on the table light (allo ther lights must be turned off,or some blue reflecions could appear on the image) and measure the White Balance. This will help us in the editing of the image.
Position the object in a pleasant way and chose the best composition. The long focal lenght permits using a little background and changing composition without moving the background.

The light scheme of this image is made of only one light, that lights the background. Infact the light hits the background, diffuses and bounce back creating the shadow towards the observer. This provides a better sense of depth. In the case of my iPod it lights also the upper face that, being very smooth, will be very bright. In the front of the object I put two folded pieces of printer paper (one for any side, two in total…). This provides the vertical reflections on the sides, emphasizing the round borders, and illuminates the front wheel of the iPod.

The screenlight is a problem. If you have a lamp bright enough to contrast the nuclear power of the screen backlight (in the iPod Mini it’s really strong, and it’s not adjustable) you are ok, but if you lamp is a bit too dark you’ll have to make a shoot only for the screen, underexposed by one or two stops, and mounting it in Photoshop.

Focus on the front face of the object, close the aperture (f8 or more) and find the right exposure making test shots.

With a photo editing software open the base image, make normal adjustments for the contrast and colour, clone any sensor dust spot (and the inevitable scatches on an ipod used for 4 years). Now mount the screen using layer mask. A little of unsharp mask and the photo is finished!!

Presenting myself

My name is Mattia, I'm 23 years old and I'm attending the First Level Degree in Automotive Engineering, at the Politecnico di Torino.

Among my interests there are cars and photography.
My photographic passion begins in 2006, with a digital Point and Shoot, at the Sardinia Rally (World Rally Championship): a unique chance, to remember forever. Then I begun to informing about photography and its technique. I experimented a little, and decided to update to a Digital Reflex (a Nikon D40), that is still with me and give me fantastic shots.

The chanches to use it however are few: when I'm not studying it's raining, in my area there aren't great landscapes to photograph, then I dedicated to sports photography, in particular rally photography.

To be honest, I don't exclude any kind of photography, now and then I do still life photography, portraits to my family members, and to my cat... :)

Here are some of my best images, you find others in my Flickr Portfolio: