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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/250 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data
Prucia
Japanese plum wine, from France
( though it seems I've made it look like a perfume advertisement in this shot )

I mentioned the other day in a post about a minor heart episode that a local restaurant, Togiya, serves Prucia, a plum wine (umeshu — 梅酒) from France. I'd never seen a plum wine from outside Japan.

Well, in the store the other day to pick up some of the fiesta-in-a-bottle Sangria Peñasol that I mentioned in last month's “A Bunch Of Blurry Pictures of Folks Pouring Wine”, to my surprise I came across a bottle of Prucia on the shelf. In the name of research and public service, I brought it home with me.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/40 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — image data

I've shown great restraint in letting it sit in the fridge, wanting to photograph the interesting bottle before actually partaking of its quirky liquid goodness. I finally got around to having it sit for a portrait for me, and in doing so had much better luck with the lighting than I did in yesterday's portraiture practice.

Make no mistake, I still have almost no clue what I'm doing, but bottles are a lot easier than people, and when you can immediately check the results on the back of the camera and make adjustments, just a bit of knowledge about light can go a very long way in guiding your experiments.

I read the most-excellent book “Light — Science and Magic” many years ago, and quite a bit has stuck with me. I've got it here on the shelf.. a re-read would certainly be time well spent.

Anyway, here's the setup for the “white” shot above:

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/50 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 — image data

It's really quite simple... three craft-store white foam boards sitting on my kitchen table, and a flash directly off to the side (next to a bottle of a different kind of plum wine that we'll see later in this post).

The on-camera flash is up, but it was acting only as the commander for the on-table flash, and did not add to the photograph's lighting.

From the rear..

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/60 sec, f/3.3, ISO 100 — image data

Each of the two standing foam boards are held by simple little plastic store-display tag holders that I bought almost five years ago, just after the last time I tried any of this stuff. Back then I had these lighting-related articles:

• The Japanese Beer Market
• If It's Not in Frame, It Doesn't Exist
• The Most Difficult Aspect of Photographic Lighting

After all that, I bought a bunch of clamps and stands and stuff, and used them to take up space in my closet for almost five years until I pulled them out today. Still, I was too lazy to use two stands per board, so I grabbed some CDs to keep the background board pressed snugly up against the floor board.

Before doing much with the flash, you want to see how much the ambient light will impact the shot, so here's one without any flash:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/40 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — image data

I futzed around with all kinds of things, including minor adjustments in camera position, flash power, flash location, aperture, etc. Here's one from later, also without flash, from a slightly higher camera position, stopped down to f/4 to increase the depth of field:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/20 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — image data

Each change is subtle, but gives quite a different mood.

Pulling the cold bottle from the fridge resulted in the expected photogenic sheen of sweat, and I tried various things to try to pull out that detail. Here I put the flash directly behind the bottle....

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/80 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — image data

That's a bit overpowering, so I moved the flash back a bit, and raised it up a bit as well....

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/50 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 — image data

The result is a bit more balanced...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — image data

With that last one, I groomed the light a bit, so to speak, in Lightroom, to increase the moodiness.

It's at this point I pulled the camera back to take the sort-of-dramatic perfume-advertisement-ish shot that opened this post. I increased the shutter speed and made the aperture smaller, thus killing the ambient light. (That is, making the non-flash light insufficient to register a photo; if I were to have taken a shot without the flash, it would have been black.)

So, I add the flash and set its power so that it gives the effect I wanted.

I tried all kinds of things. I placed the flash almost up against the side of the bottle...

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 102mm — ¹/20 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400 — image data

... to produce...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/80 sec, f/8, ISO 320 — image data

I tried snooting the flash between some tissue boxes, in an effort to highlight the sweat beads from the side...

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/40 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 — image data

... but it just produced this:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/160 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data

I tried shooting from above down into the bottle, and also added some front fill via the on-camera flash

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/20 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 — image data

... and got this:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/160 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data

Before pulling the Prucia from the fridge, I wanted to practice with a non-cold bottle. Fumie likes the Kumano (熊野) plum wine from 熊平の梅, and having just gotten a bottle, I thought it was the perfect place to start.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — image data
“Kumano Plum Wine”
from Kumahei no Ume

It's a less expressive bottle, but I still futzed around with polarizer filters, flash placement, etc. Here's a slightly more sterile look I stumbled upon:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/40 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data

Many factors go into each shot, including some that are not recorded in the image Exif. The placement of the flash, whether the on-camera was used, the power each flash is fired at, whether a polarizer was used and if so its setting... all of this plays an important part in the final result, but since I was change these all around willy nilly and took no notes, I have only a vague memory of what actually applied to each shot, so it was a learning experience, but not as much of one as it could have been.

I guess I'll just have to do it again.

And finally, from the “only in Japan” files, here's a can of beer I just had to shoot:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/250 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data
Rolling Hop

In case you can't quite read that at the bottom, yes, it actually says:

“The rolling stones are the greatest rock 'n roll band in the world”

( opinions expressed by the can do not necessarily reflect that of your blog author )

I wonder whether Suntory had to pay the Rolling Stones for the logo, or the Stones had to pay Suntory for the tagline.

I also wonder where this beer was produced. I don't recall it when I toured the local Suntory brewery this spring.