Today we are doing something a little different. Instead of reviewing new gear, we are going to take you on a quick tour behind the scenes of a recent commercial shoot that we did for a client taking white background photos of around 150 sunglasses from different angles including from the front, top, and side for use in E-commerce.
The Project
Besides LensVid we also run a production company and although about 70% of our work revolves around video projects we do take on some stills work from time to time, but like we do in video, our focus is typically food and products and in this case – sunglasses.
The client approached us and asked to shoot a collection of around 150 sunglasses. Initially, the idea was to all of them from the front and side, however, on the day of shooting the client changed his mind and asked to shoot from the top and from the side instead. This required us to modify our setup and spend a few hours running some tests until we got everything the way we wanted to.
First lesson, always agree with the client on the exact angles and provide sample images alongside the contract so you won’t waste time changing setups on the day of the shoot.
Shooting sunglasses on a white background
Our setup
Initially, we designed a single setup with two cameras, one from the front and one from the right (front) side. We built a box-shaped rectangle from white (thick) foamboard with a flexible PVC Backdrop to create a seamless white background.
We cut down one of the sides so we would have better access to the sunglasses and also cut out a hole for the camera to shoot the sunglasses from the front.
During our testing phase, we discovered that we could not find any way of removing the reflection of the camera lens in the glasses and this will have to be dealt with in post (not too complex with some of the new tools currently available in Photoshop).
Eventually, the client changed his mind and asked for a top shot with the glasses closed. For this, we used a top-down camera with the Light Cone X Large by Karl Taylor with two light panels by Godox from the side (note that pointing the glasses fully up resulted in the lens reflecting from the glasses so we needed to position them at a slight angle or remove the reflection in post).
Our production cart with a NUC computer running Sony Imaging Edge with another tablet and shooting angle
Gear
For the front angle, we used our A7R V with a Sony 70-200mm f/4 lens (this lens has a fantastic 1:2 magnification although it was not necessary in this case as we shot from over 50cm away at around 80-90mm). The glasses were lit using a single continuous 350W SmallRig light with a large softbox overhead at a slight angle.
For the side angle, we used our Sony A1 with the Voigtländer 65mm F2 macro lens and later on the Sony 70-200mm f/4 (after we had to switch away from the front angle at the request of the client). The camera was placed on a Manfrotto 244 Variable Friction Magic Arm but later on, switched to a tripod with a Sunwayfoto Geared Head GH-PROII+ that we reviewed a while back and provided us with a great deal of precision which is essential for getting the right composition.
Our (initial) two-camera setup
Challenges, Techniques, and Tips
While you might think that reflections are going to be the biggest challenge when it comes to shooting sunglasses, there are a large number of other problems that we encountered that were much more time-consuming for our workflow in this project.
- Glasses position – this might sound simple enough, but it is a pretty annoying problem to solve. When shooting dozens of products that are not identical (some larger, smaller, longer, shorter, etc.) placing them in the same position in the frame is very time-consuming. This was actually the most time-consuming aspect of shooting from the side.
To solve this issue we tried different methods including a top-down (or later side-angled) Laser Level to keep the position and angle of all the glasses the same. This worked to an extent but required hiding the beams before each shot with a cardboard (turning off the laser moved its position ever so slightly so it was not an option) so we eventually moved to placing temporary markers on the sizes of the glasses before removing them and putting the next ones which worked well but again was pretty time-consuming.
Using guides on the monitor as well as markers was also something that we tried but it was not precise enough (although it did work to some extent). Using Onion skin like the function on Atomos monitors or as Sony calls it image overlays (see video) can be more very useful for precise positioning (sadly this only exists on the desktop Sony software and not on the app for some reason). - Finding the right angle – some sunglasses are made in a way that looks like they are “falling” forwards or backward. This means that you might need to change the angle of the glasses. This is complicated to achieve and is difficult or even impossible to fix in post. We used a basic tilt platform that we had from a different project but if you really want to invest you can use something like this linear platform (but you will need to place it under the white surface and connect a wood or cardboard to the top part to be able to position the entire sunglass on top but it will give you very precise control of the tilt of the glasses).
- “Floating” sunglasses – this is a very annoying problem that is very common to glasses/sunglasses. With many glasses, one of the arms does not sit on the table and is practically floating just above (usually since the arms are not straight). There are three ways of dealing with this issue. The first is to reposition the arm (by gently twisting the glasses – but not the arms! – just be careful), if this doesn’t work you can use sticky putty in tiny quantities behind the lowest part of the arm that touches the surface (this will only work for specific angles where it is possible to hide the material). The last option is to try and fix the issue in post but this might actually prove to be more difficult so we recommend to try and prevent this issue in the first place.
- Depth of focus – when shooting sunglasses, even at f/11 or f/13 there is a very good chance that the arms will not be in focus when they are open as the focus depth is just not big enough. This one might or might not be an issue depending on the needs of the client. In our case, we explained the situation to our client and he was OK with the arms being out of focus, but if you do want all of the product to be in focus you have a few options. The first is to use either a technical camera (see here) or tilt-shift lenses to change the plane of focus and get most or all the glasses in focus. These are both expensive options but they are much faster than using focus stacking which is the third option. On our A7R V for example there is a focus stacking mode which is very fast but you still need software to combine the images (there are a handful of cameras that can do focus stacking in the camera).
- Cleaning – it’s important to have your product as clean as possible (use a new microfiber cloth – those do get dirty after a while) and you might also want to use a blower (or an electrical blower) or even alcohol wipes for glasses and even work with cotton gloves to prevent oily fingerprints on the glasses, but at the end of the day you will always have some cleaning work in post.
Important but never enough – cleaning the glasses
Processing
Being able to automate the processing of editing the images was a key part of this project and essential to complete this project on time and on budget.
There are several aspects to the processing of the images. You will need to make sure that the background is 100% white and do so without affecting the glasses with a precise mask. You will need to remove dust, scratches, and dirt from the glasses and finally (depending on the request of your client) add shadows (or add them back from the mask).
We tried all sorts of different options but in the end, we came up with two Photoshop actions that worked fairly well on most images (some required more manual work).
We tried at first to create a layer mask, set the canvas size to 1080X1080 px (the size the client requested), and fill the gaps with a new layer painted white, but it created some unwanted issues. So we created 2 separate actions:
- Select subject>vector mask for accurate and clean selection and background removal.
- In the second action, we rasterized the layer of the vector mask to make it a regular changeable layer mask, created a new solid color layer, set the canvas size at 1080X1080, and centered the object. Afterward, we worked on each image separately and exposed the shadows in the original photo to give the sunglasses a realistic look and fixed other parameters with the curve adjustment layer. Shadows were added manually from the mask.
The cleaning process did require manual work (we tried the new dust removal option from retouch4me but it also removes details from text – if you know of a better AI tool for removing dust/dirt from images – please let us know in the comments). The best tool we found for that is the new “remove tool” in PS which does amazing work very quickly (but is still manual).
A list of our 2 actions in PS
Conclusion
While not necessarily very profitable, learning how to shoot and edit a large number of clean product shots for a client on time with a minimal amount of work in post is a skill every product photographer should master at some point even as a simple exercise in developing a better workflow.
For us, this has been an interesting experience in problem-solving and optimization. While it is pretty easy to shoot 5, 10, or even 20 sunglasses and do amazing work relatively quickly, shooting and editing 150 sunglasses in a short period on a low budget requires some planning and a lot of optimization.
Sunglasses side view on white background
From a business perspective, if you are new to this type of e-commerce style multi-product shooting sessions, the challenge might not be purely technical, but more based around minimizing the work required during the shoot and in post to a minimum (these projects rarely come with a large budget which means you would want to spend as little time as possible shooting and editing each image while still producing a decent result).
If you have a project with a large number of similar products we suggest that you shoot and edit at least a couple of samples and present them to the client to see if they are what he/she is looking for.
You should also try and evaluate the time you spend on each image and price the project accordingly (keep in mind that the more images you take the more proficient you will become, but only up to a point, so preparation is key).
Since this project might be one of several with the current client, we already have some ideas for improvements for the next shoots to make the process even more efficient and we might share them in a future video/article.
If you like this sort of BTS content, please let us know and we will consider making more behind-the-scenes videos and articles in the future.
Iddo Genuth 
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