Photography
Professional photography Chesham Buckinghamshire, Product Photography, Studio Photography
"A picture paints a thousand words"
An old cliché but still very true. Everyone has a camera now. Rapid advances in technology mean that compact cameras capture images that compete with much more extravagant equipment from a few years back. Even the cameras in the latest smart phones take great pictures for casual use.
But here lies the problem. Sure we can all take photos and once we have deleted the "finger on the lens" shots, some are even quite good! But if you want high quality images that will form an integral part of your brand, there is a lot more to photography than a simple "point and shoot".
Just a small technical point: manufacturers of cheap cameras advertise features such as “12+ Megapixels”. But a high megapixel count on its own won't capture great images, in fact on cheap cameras, quite the opposite. The more megapixels your camera captures the higher the “noise” on your images, especially in dark scenes.
Picture quality comes from a balance of a few components including a good quality lens and image sensor (the part that captures the light). Generally, the larger the image sensor the better because it will result in less noise and sharper images. A 12+ megapixel image shot on a high end digital SLR with a full frame 35mm sensor will be of a very high quality. But take that same 12+ megapixel image on a compact camera with an image sensor half the size and the resulting image will be very soft with a lot of noise in dark areas.
Why do I need professional photography?
Sometimes our clients take a few snaps themselves, and when the picture was needed yesterday there’s sometimes no other option. But with a bit more time, a professionally taken photo is one of the best investments you can make. Any image looks OK on its own, but when you compare it to the same subject shot under decent lighting you realise how big the difference is. Below is a quick shot taken on a compact camera under normal office lighting. Once cut out in Photoshop and brightened up the results would be a bit better, but still not great.
The key to good product photography is lighting, preferably using daylight balanced lights which make normal lights appear very yellow. This provides images that need minimal Photoshop work because the colours captured are extremely accurate. Below is one of the light tent set-ups we use for quick product photography: three 600w daylight lamps and an 800mm light tent. The light tent helps control any unwanted reflections and softens the shadows giving a nice even light. Look further down to see the resulting image taken on our SLR.
Scroll back up and compare that to the original shot, quite a difference!
Using a professional photographer will guarantee great pictures, right?
Unfortunately not. The image below left was taken for one of our clients. They used a photo studio local to them to avoid posting the products to us. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of the photo but the lighting throws the front fascia into shadow. These photos were destined for a product catalogue so they need to pick out the detail and look bright on the page and consistent with the other shots in the catalogue. The photographer they used was clearly not a specialist product photographer. Compare the image on the left to the one on the right that was taken in our light tent and you can see the difference.
We help our clients to choose the right photographer for the job!
We have produced photography for clients located in:
Amersham, Aylesbury, Beaconsfield, Chesham, Gerrards Cross, High Wycombe, Hemel Hempstead, London, Luton, Maidenhead, Marlow, Milton Keynes, Rickmansworth, Slough, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Watford and Windsor.
Photography Gallery
Below are a few other shots from one of the photographers we use www.octopusstudios.co.uk.
Please feel free to take a look at their site.
