Creating Micro Product Photography for Manufacturing
Getting great, market worthy product photography can be a challenge. Especially if your products are the size of a grain of sand. Creating micro product photography for manufacturing is a great combination of technology, science and art.
Recently, one of my clients came to me with a challenge: create clean, simple and effective images of their new industrial wire product. Feature close ups on individual strands and show off its flexibility. These photos were used in their sell sheets, brochures, press releases and presentations.
A Hairy Shoot!
Each strand of wire was about the size of a human hair, if that hair was made of metal. Due to the material strength and flexibility, the strands really liked to bunch together. Very quickly, the strands would turn into a snarling mess!
We carefully teased out a few strands with a comb. Clipping the ends with a sharp pair of scissors gave them more or less even ends.
Using our custom stack focus rig, we were able to sandwich together 60 frames, shifting the focus forward about a half a millimeter at a time. This allowed us to create an image of the product that was sharp from front to back. With a little retouching, the final image is perfect for the sell sheet.
Gotta Be Flexible for Macro Product Photography
Another image we created was to illustrate the wire’s flexibility in use. This was less of a daunting task, so we pulled the camera off of the stack focus rig and adjusted lighting to show off the sheen of the material.
This image was perfect as an inset image on the bottom of the sell sheet.
Micro product photography for manufacturing takes a little bit of pre-planning and, often, some specialized tools to pull off. The results, however, will help this manufacturer to present their product in a new light!