# Strobist style watch photography



## GuySie

Any other Strobist readers here? If you're not familiar with it, Strobist is a popular photography blog about off-camera lighting using PC cords or wireless radio triggers. I've been an avid reader for a while and I'm trying to apply some of the techniques to watch product photography.

An old blogpost of his concerned shooting watches, specifically using specular highlights to give you some sweet reflections - but only where you want them:



> A watch is a tidy little nightmare of complex, reflective surfaces. Specular highlight control is pretty much all you have to work with.
> 
> One of Ming's go-to techniques is to shoot a tightly zoomed beam of light through a larger diffuser. He is using the reflection of the edge of the light hitting the diffuser (might want to stop and think about that one) to get lovely edges to his highlights.


The Ming he refers to has a Flickr set filled with absolutely jawdropping, gorgeous watch photo's. This one especially caught my eye:



And I've been trying to use the same kind of lighting setup on my own watch photographs. My first 2 experiments:





What do you guys think?


----------



## The Dude

*Excellent but...*

Really nicely done but we barely see the watch face but nice captures the flickr set you pointed us to seems to have watches captured with lights and diffusers as well as bounced flash light.

Here are a few captured with a bounced flash... In a restaurant... and at home

Using diffusers on two speedlights



















Using no flash










This one using one bounced flash on a ceiling and one reflected speedlight to the left and slightly in front of the watch










In a restaurant using one bounced speedlight



















One bounced flash... I was so not awake...




























No flash...










Candle light










No flash, no lights...










One speedlight










And one more with one speedlight


----------



## GuySie

*Re: Excellent but...*



The Dude said:


>


Thanks! I really love this pic out of your post, the DOF and the way the watch just lies on the napkin exudes a careless, non posed shot - and maybe it was... but something in the composition makes it work.


----------



## kiwidj

*Re: Excellent but...*



The Dude said:


>


Those pics are my favourites. Wonderful watches too. All superb...:-!


----------



## GuySie

*Re: Excellent but...*



kiwidj said:


> Those pics are my favourites. Wonderful watches too. All superb...:-!


What's your shooting style kiwi, mainly available light? Or some flash work too? I mainly see your B&W's and its hard to really figure out lighting schemes from those


----------



## om-4

I've long bookmarked Mings page but haven't yet replicated his stuff. Somewhere he has a setup shot using his basic 3 perspexsheet with 2 strobes.

I often use one single shootthrough umbrella or a brollybox and maybe a reflector on the side. Or just plain old natural light.

brollybox

















just ambient

















shootthrough



















It's pretty hard to come up with an interesting angle on a watch and also give it some sexy lighting. I regularly take 30 to 50 shots of a watch and still think the result is half of what I wanted.


----------



## chshangers

For reference, Ming's setup shots:

__
https://flic.kr/p/843110363


__
https://flic.kr/p/843974766


----------



## Surly

I've just found this forum and Strobist. I am wanting to get back into photography and I am starting to get hooked on watches too! 
Thanks for the great photos and the setups from ming are quite helpful. 
Matt


----------

