I have worked for Manfrotto for the past twenty years. It has always been a key client, especially in my field of work, being a very important brand that many of us have used since the beginning and have grown with. For Manfrotto, I also do product testing; together we develop new products, one of which is the 269HDBU tripod that I use in most of my overhead shots.

Challenging the possibilities offered by the system

I was asked to produce, together with the regular catalogue pictures, two sets of pictures. The first was supposed to have a strong graphic impact so to emphasize the aesthetics and functionality of the products; the second one needed to summarize, in a single image the different groups of products. The project included a backlight shot, on a white glossy reflective surface. Black steel and aluminum objects, however, are not very suitable for backlight shots.

Dopo alcuni tentativi abbiamo scartato la possibilità di una illuminazione d'appoggio perchè il risultato era sgradevole e sintetico. E' iniziata così una snervante opera di posizionamento dei pezzi che dovevano non solo comporsi in modo gradevole, ma anche recuperare il minimo di riflettenza che poteva derivare dalla parziale riflessione della luce dal retro o dalla base.

Hyperfocus shots and customized digital process

Another problem was that the distance between the objects and the background caused for the pieces’ outline to look out of focus. The solution was to shot at f.11 where the Hasselblad 80mm gives good results and a reasonable depth of fileld, positioning the objects as close as possible to the hyper focus.

The digital process was divided in two steps. First we save an ultra-smooth file, to recover as much of the stucture as we could; second we use a very complex treatment for structure and sharpness that gave excellent results.
For the single products we used a different technique by pushing contrast outside regular parameters; the result was exceptional both for print and video.

Photo by Roberto Bigano. Assistents, Angela Scricco ed Andrea Cracco