360 Product Photography: Spin and Pull Out

We recently had the opportunity to do some work for a client who wanted a unique way to show their product on their vendor sites. They [client] wanted the standard product photography but also wanted really short video clips that would reveal the product.

Still product shots for websites and catalogues are pretty standard. You make sure the piece looks great (work with a good prop stylist), make sure the lighting is spot on, then start snapping a few different angles. Pull them into the editor of your choice, fix any blemishes that you may have missed, colour, style, export, and on to the next. But what will make your product images pop?

The details, the look, and the presentation.

We could have set up a few rigs and done the typical “focus in and slide” on some of the features , then cut them together, closing on a wide shot (here’s one we did for our own shoot), however we wanted something more consistent and that captured that “reveal” feel. So for this product photography shoot we decided to do a 360 spin with a pull out. One continuous clip that starts on a big feature and ends on the full reveal.

The whole process was automated with a turntable, slider, digital slider head, and a camera for stills. We chose to sequence the images rather than shoot video as this would enable us to have the most control over the final image. Plus this gave us the added benefit of being able to use any one of the shots in the sequence as a stand alone still frame for print or online.

Here’s an unprocessed view of one of our test clips.

https://vimeo.com/366835333