Comments

  1. Hi Karl! I have seen some of your watch tutorials where you use large scrims. I am photographing watches in my small studio using speed lights. To save space and time (?) I use your light cone. Even though I got close with the flashes the customer says the steel is too flat. And no matter how much contrast I add in Photoshop he thinks the surface is not right (it’s polished steel)

    I will watch this tutorial soon but just need to know…If I use the light cone, should I also have another light setup to get extra exposures to comp in some specular lights? Or should I even not use the light cone, and just use reflectors or scrims?

    1. Hi, the best most controlled photography for high end images is always going to be done better manually with careful control of reflectors, scrims, acrylic and some hard specular lighting for added bite especially in gem stones. You will see in this class how I did that even with the light cone.

  3. I used to have a Sony A7R, but sold it before my move to America. At the time I bought my Phase One, I did a shoot with both cameras and my Nikon D800, to compare the results. I found that the A7R was faster than the Nikon or Phase One, Nikon’s autofocus was faster than the Sony or Phase One, and picture quality of the Phase One was superior to the Nikon or Sony.

    I was shooting a basketball game where fast shutter and focus are essential. Although the Nikon and Sony caught action that I would have missed with the Phase, the image quality of the Phase was so superior that I gradually stopped using both 35 MM cameras. My Nikon is now used as an extra webcam.

    I mention this because images shot by a 35MM camera have a look that I now dislike. I didn’t notice before shooting MF, but now that I do shoot MF, I dislike looking at 35 mm images, apart from the absolute best, usually in the wildlife and action sports categories.

    For this shoot, I wondered why you chose to use the Sony instead of cropping an image made with your Hasselblad. You said you couldn’t get as close as you’d like with the telephoto/macro you had, but it seems to me that you could have gotten close enough to crop an image of the same or slightly larger size than you got from the Sony, and would have had the extra image quality from the Hasselblad sensor.

    1. Hi, the 120mm macro doesn’t go anywhere near the level of magnification and it would have required quite a bit of crop so i decided it would be good to try with the Sony as well as for a change let our audience see something with 35mm and Capture One which we get asked about regularly. Of course like you for me medium format has a look and silkiness that is beyond 35mm but equally the largest part of our audience don’t operate with MF so it was an opportunity to provide a live show in 35mm. We use a lot of Sony lenses and equipment for filming so I may invest in the Sony A1 in the future so that we have a better option for any future 35mm examples.

  4. Hi Karl!

    Thank you for the show, very interesting again 🙂 🙏

    I have two questions:

    1) If you shoot antique jewellery, do you use blutack? Or what do you use to make sure that you won’t make any damage to the piece?

    2) When aligning two layers in Photoshop manually, is there any particular reason why you don’t use Difference blend mode?

    Thank you!

    1. Hi Martina, Glad you enjoyed it!
      1. Hot glue gun is unlikely to do any damage, I’ve never experienced it doing so.
      2. No particular reason, I’ll certainly try it now you’ve suggested it!

  5. DougHowell

    Karl, I heard you say that you are still shooting for clientele, are you still doing commercial work? I’m just very curious. Another brilliant show and your product is mint.

    1. Hi Doug, yes I still shoot client work, not as much as I used to as I’m more selective with what I do but I have several big clients that i’ve worked with for many years that continue to work with me. Most of my work is product photography, occasionally creative concept images and video work too.

    2. Hi Martina, further to my last message I’ve just checked in ‘difference’ blend mode but as the two shots are not lit the same then there are many variables which mean ‘difference’ blend mode doesn’t allow it to see no difference if you know what I mean.

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