Very nice.
I have little experience shooting or critiqueing product shots and setups like this.
Couple of reactions, since my 2 cents costs nothing.
Excellent concept, the spilled cocoa powder, beans and the warm tones, like good hot cocoa.
My eye goes first to the upper left center, OOF beans (or are they nuts?) and I then want more sharpness, more DOF there. Second, down to the mug but yanked back up by the bright white reflected light.
I'd try to get those highlights down, preferably in camera.
If you want the mug to be the primary subject, surrounded by the softer ingredients_you might need more DOF or some selective softening of the less lit elements. With significant light above and the position upper left, my eye pulls too much away.
Hope this is useful and not too nit-picky.
Scott
Thanks, sbeme. Everything was done in camera. They are actual Cacao beans, and I did try to get the exposure on them down as much as possible in camera, though I couldn't get any tighter with a scrim without altering the reflection on the large jug.
As for the DOF, this was shot with a 24-105 (my only lens for still life, currently), with a slight zoom, at f20, which, in turn, compressed the DOF. In Capture 1, I did reduce clarity for the soft focus feel as it's what I had envisioned. I want to invest in a 100 Macro!
The smaller highlights were already brought to my attention as a distraction, and I will reduce them in post.
The light was actually not coming from the left, though I do appreciate all of your comments for improvement!
Doug,
This is for my personal portfolio, though I do appreciate the comment!
The 24-105 is a great lens. Shouldnt be an issue here. You arent going to get more DOF more stopped down, but you might, theoretically, have a sharper image.
Didnt mean to imply that the light was coming from the top. Rather that the beans top left were relatively illuminated.
What was the full EXIF?
Scott
I love this lens. Though, with any zoom, when your camera is physically close to the subject, and then you zoom a bit into the frame, you're going to compress the focal planes. However, I did want a soft focus feel throughout on this image, which can easily be reversed in Capture 1.
I am a tight crop guy myself, but would love to see what it looks like with more on the left and on top. The composistion and lighting is so perfect.Doug
I really like this. It made me want to make some hot chocolate for myself. I know you said it took you 5 hours to style. For me, that would mean getting something that I thought looked good. Take a handfull of shots, usually with slightly different settings. Then go view them on my monitor. Typically, I will find something I want to change. Rinse, repeat, until I have taken a pretty large quantity of pics. Out of curiosity, how many shots did you take before you were satisfied?
It was actually piping hot, fresh poured. I had to go from a mug, to a pitcher with a spout to the pictured mug. Although this only took about a minute or so, I guess it lost smoke quickly thereafter. I hadn't noticed.
Yeah, I'm missing the steam too. A small piece of dry ice would work nicely for that.
A direct, more collimated "kicker light from the left rear to add some specular highlight to the nuts and separate the the objects from the background would help also I think as seen below in a four-light exercise I did on my site:
Thanks, Chuck. That's a nice example you posted. I really wanted supporting elements to recess into a black void this time around. It took a lot to do so!
Actually, I didn't shift anything. I just converted the color space to sRGB and included it in the jpeg. With the color space info it *ought* to display properly on any color managed display.
