A couple of weeks ago, while I was designing a brochure that was needed for a big show in London this week, my client e-mailed me and asked if I could reshoot their handpiece.

They had modified it from the last shoot we did towards the end of last year, and wanted to make sure we got the latest and the greatest in the brochure.

I said “Sure!” and e-mailed him a quote, which he agreed to. Cool, I thought, more work. Now it was time to panic!

©2006

They said they’d drop the handpiece off that Friday evening and I could only have it through the weekend since it was needed on Monday.

Also, since we’re in the process of selling our house, all of my big-photo stuff is off-site or in storage. My background stands, backgrounds etc. were not readily available.

So, I thought, what’ll I do? Luckily the product was small enough, I didn’t need huge lights or a large background.

This allowed my to use my Nikon SB-800 speedlights as they provided more than enough light. The pictures had to match the previous shoot because we were mixing new shots with old.

I figured I could use a small folding table that was sturdy enough to hold everything without vibrating.

“How to mount the backdrop?” I pondered. Well, since I had a bunch of PVC in the garage for the house, I quickly planned a system where I could easily attach and detach the background material and use the table for other things. Also, not wanting to clutter up the house, I needed to be able to dismantle the table and support for storage.

I cobbled together some 1/2″ pvc for the uprights and crossbars (for stability) and connected it all together using PVC elbows and “Tees”.

They fit snugly enough that I didn’t even need to glue them together.

Then I screwed some 3/4″ PVC cross-fittings to the side of my Costco gotten table. I used 3/4″ fittings so I could easily slide the back-support on and off the table. I used the cross-fittings because their longer horizontal cross-piece allowed me to get a sure engagement of the tabletop (only about 1 1/2″ thick) and kept the horizontal mounting from torque-ing the screws out of the tabletop when the backdrop was mounted to it. They also had enough of a vertical-section to keep the backdrop straight for the shoot. (see table 1 illus)

Then it was a matter of getting a backdrop that matched the tonal qualities of my big-background that I’d used in the first shoot. I was lucky enough to have a roll of brown wrapping paper on hand. It was durable enough to take being clipped to the top of my background support (see Table 2 illus) and matched the tonality of my original warm-gray background.

Now it was just a matter of placing the original translucent-blue background on top of it to make it the same as last time.

“Where does one get a translucent-blue background with microlenses on it?” you might ask. Simple! Bed, Bath and Beyond has a bunch of cool placemats that make interesting backgrounds for small products.

Using my SB-800s allowed me to use my cardboard-snoots and small gels just like I did with the shoot last year. I had enough light-control with these tactics. In fact, this is a similar method that Strobist has been using in his shoots and is what caught my attention to his blog in the first-place. I thought “Here’s another guy using cardboard-snoots and going to Home-Depot for photo supplies!”…I like him already.

I was able to adjust the lighting using the Command-function built into the Nikon SB-800 flash system, this let me compensate for dot-gain in the final, printed publication.

I’ll get around to telling you about cardboard-snoots, carboard flags and masks in another blog, but for now, the client loved the shots, we got everything done on time and under budget, and there was no need to panic.