Automate to elevate series: product photography automation without creative limitation

In this episode of our photography automation insights we look at how flexible ORBITVU’s automated photography systems can be; and how the tools and accessories ORBITVU have can be used to provide flexibility so photographers will not have to sacrifice creative control. This is key to product imaging for example, the ability to control lighting, the ability to be creative depending on the type of images you need – because one day you may be shooting images to use on your ecommerce platforms and next month you may want to shoot images for a marketing campaign. Therefore, being able to be creative and not sacrifice control for the sake of automation is one of the reasons why ORBITVU’s product photography systems provide the best of both worlds.

Flexible product photography solutions to fit your visual content production needs, including for social media

Diego and Mark use some wine and flowers to do a Valentine’s themed photo shoot using the ALPHASHOT XL PRO v2. The standard configuration of the ALPHASHOT XL PRO v2, without optional accessories is quite a flexible system just out of the box!  It comes with a strip light on the right and left hand side and both lights can be moved in and out; and be rotated in addition. The strip lights on the top right and left can be rotated too and the entire back wall and bottom is backlit with LEDs – giving you six separate light zones that you can control independently. This level of lighting control provides the best level of creative flexibility for product photographers and ecommerce marketing teams.

A quick shot of the set is captured using default template settings. ORBITVU’s integrated photography software allows you to adjust the camera and lighting to fine tune the product image details. For a faster and efficient workflow, it is recommended to save your set-up settings as a customized template for a particular product for reuse at another time, so you can repeat the same photo shoot settings to maintain product image consistency and quality. That’s the true power of photography automation!

Other than the reflective pad, no additional photography accessories were used to capture the first image. This provides a base to compare the final images to. The reflective pad, is the only product photography accessory used throughout the photo shoot, to demonstrate a little creativity by showing the reflection of a product.  A product shot is captured, and the background is removed automatically by Orbitvu’s photography software within seconds to produce an image that is useable with just standard light settings. For some this may just be fine and would consider this to be a useable image for their ecommerce website or social media post. But, you can see the reflection is a little washed out and that is a little more noticeable when the background color is changed to Valentine Pink – the marketing campaigns theme color. While it’s possible to manipulate the light further and get closer to a product image we’d like to use for example for a social media marketing campaign, there are also hard reflections on the bottles that do not look good. However, for a quick product image from an automated photography solution out of the box – it really achieves a lot and allows you to get your images published on your ecommerce site fast!

However, the focus of this episode is to see how creative we can really be using ORBITVU’s automated product photography solutions. The product image is reshot using two additional photography accessories – a set of light diffusers and a front textile cover.

The ALPHASHOT XL PRO v2 model has options for diffuser kits to be added to the system. Diego demonstrates how easy they are to work with and how quickly they can be installed on each side of the two side lights. These additional features stick magnetically and can be rotated to specific angles and locked in.

The third accessory the team demonstrate is the front textile reflective pad. With automated product photography solutions like the ALPHASHOT XL PRO v2, it is typical to get some reflection from the studio or the camera. The textile cover, which is reversible – white on one side and black on the other – goes across the front of the machine to block that reflection. This provides flexibility in terms of handling reflection or bouncing light. Diego demonstrates how easy the reflective pad is to install over the machine.

Accessories installed; Diego quickly captures the new images with the background removed and you see how the image looks much different to the original we took.

The reflections are much softer, and more diffused using just the default template to capture the product image. However, even with the accessories you can manipulate the light further and template the settings for reuse, for the accessory that you have installed. The final image is much nicer and more clear in terms of reflection and this can be seen best when the background color is changed; the lighting looks nice and more creative.  The final images are quickly exported in a couple of different backgrounds, size and file types. It’s possible to create as many of these different types of outputs as we would like and can be set as output presets to quickly export images as needed.

The objective of ORBITVU’s product photography accessories is to enhance creative control, and at the same time enable you to be more productive in terms of speed and efficiency as you would expect with automation.

Final ecommerce product photography and marketing campaign images

To see more details of the product photography solutions used in this episode, click here or request a demo and we’d be happy to show you the system, and its accessories online or in person at our demo studio.