Watch advert (a test)

[Loch]

Hi All,

I was flicking through a magazine the last day and I saw a very nice advert for a watch and decided to have a go and see could I do something that looked good enough for such an advert.

The left image (the orange one) is the image of my watch I started with and the right is the advert I faked using the image on the left.

Please have a look and C+C my work, Thanks!!

[caleb]

Well first off, your white balance is off. This is correctable in pp, although you introduce some noise and stretch out your histogram so some color details are lost.

you'll need to balance and soften your light source to eliminate shadows. I think your angle and light setup as is may be perfect, so you could isolate the watch from the background and put it on a different background (such as a textured metal). A reshoot is probably in order. I may try to put a light underneath a sheet of see through material with white paper above it. I use plexiglass on sawhorses and tracing paper. This makes isolating it a lot easier (and infact you could use Multiply layer blending mode for the background and use a layer mask to draw around the watch).

For matching the lighting, it looks dead on. From what I've seen on youtube or similar sites, sometimes they will take a second shot using a CPL to cut glare from the face and then merge two photos.

[Loch]

Hi Caleb,

The left image (the orange one) is the image of my watch I started with and the right is the advert I faked using the image on the left.

Does that make scense?

[Frog]

I know nothing of advertising shots but I think the face of the watch is not sharp enough.
It appears to not be parallel to the lens.

[adamsti]

It looks good. Being a watch nut, many ads use a very shallow depth of field lens, and often the entire face is not crisp. Also, the hands are not at the traditional 10 and 2 position.

[caleb]

Oh, I understand now. Yes fake advertisement looks perfect, I thought you were trying to mimick the ad (which wasn't yours). My apologies.

[Loch]

Thanks all!!

Adamsti - I agree about the shallow depth of field, unfortunetly I dont have a macro lens to give me that beautiful effect.

Frog - I was using a tipod and couldn't get directly over the face (I was too lazy to move it!!)

Thanks Caleb

[cm_mtb]

Your edit looks great. Nice job!

[Anbesol]

I was going to say the same as frog - the watch isn't parallel to the camera. I think it would look better if the watch was in one of those round stiffeners, it would give it a 3 dimensional sort of perspective. You can see that the watch was simply laying down on a flat surface. I'd also set the clock to something like 12:30 or 7:15, as opposed to 12:57. I'd also change the light source to give a softer and more evenly spread light coverage.

Great edit though, and great use of colors and color balance (in the edit). For future reference, in these shots you can achieve great white balance from the camera simply by calibrating white balance right before the shot, in the place you are shooting. Doing this you'll eliminate the orange cast over the image.

*edit -scratch that, that last comment I made was based on the assumption you are using DSLR or a camera with specific custom white balance options. You may not be.