Photo

    Shooting of things is one of the most popular means of earning money among magazine photographers. Women magazines always need pictures of all new lipstick tubes, bottles of scent, cream pots, book covers, costume jewellery; magazines for men require photos of tobacco-pipes, daggers, knives, footwear. This shooting doesn’t bring much money, but if you adapt yourself to it, become familiar with it and take it seriously without haughtiness, it can not only support you but also give artistic pleasure when you solve more and more technical and composition tasks.
   It’s convenient to take pictures of things with large-format cameras which have tilting and shifting front and back sides and double extension bellows which allow shooting large photos of small items. Only such cameras allow correcting perspective distortion and obtaining ideal sharpness of all objects lying in one plane at any shot depth, or on the contrary, obtaining blur of the image when it is necessary. Purpose of the camera front and back sides tilting is different. In neutral position both sides of the camera are perfectly parallel. The shifting and tilting of the camera sides taken together provide perspective and sharpness control.
    Large-format cameras with movable sides have a great advantage in comparison with narrow-film or medium format cameras. But format cameras and sheet films are very expensive. Not every photographer can afford himself buying it. That’s why many photographers use cameras of different formats for shooting things. With the appearance of digital cameras most Russian magazines turned to shooting things with such cameras. This sped up the process of images preparation for printing.
Despite of the camera model you have, it’s necessary to have a wide spectrum of optics from wide-angle to portrait telephoto lens for shooting things. At the same time all camera lenses must have macro modes of operation. The point is that it has recently become fashionable to make hypertrophied intensification of perspective or, on the contrary, the same hypertrophied reduction of sharpness depth. It’s impossible to obtain such effects without changeable optics (See photo 1).

 

It has recently become stylish to use angle shots and wide spectrum of changeable optics at applied shooting. Many digital cameras are supplied with perfect lenses with changeable focal distance. These cameras are good for such kind of shooting. Nikon 5000. A small camera with handy revolving display. It’s very convenient for taking pictures of things. The optics provides striking sharpness depth in the mode of macro shooting. Camera Nikon coolpix 5000. Sensitivity 100 ASA. Exposure ½ sec. Aperture 7,6.