How to Take Great Photos of a Violin

I recently had the opportunity to photograph some of luthier Jonathan Vacanti’s hand made violins.  They are beautiful works of art.  It’s great to see that true craft is still happening out there.  Vacanti works at  Vermont Violins, Burlington’s violin shop on Church St.

Product photography is much trickier than it seems.  Photographing products means that you need to get perfect shots of the item.  No glare, straight and sharp, great lighting, even background.

To shoot this hand made violin, I knew that the final product would be a violin floating on a black background.  In the studio, I set up a black muslin background and blocked out the light from the window to make sure I was working in a darker environment.  It can be difficult to get a true black right in the camera while keeping the rest of  the image properly exposed.  My goal was to get the background as black as possible before heading into post production in Photoshop.

To get the violin to ‘stand up’ with the least amount of movement, interference with the lighting, and least amount of post time, we hung the violin on fishing line between two light stands.  Thankfully the violins are extremely light and didn’t need much support, but we made sure that there was something close by underneath, just in case it decided to jump off the line.

As far as lighting, I chose to use two soft boxes on SP-Excalibur studio flashes, triggered by a wireless transmitter.  I wanted to keep the lighting fairly even, adding just a bit of depth and a little highlight on the edges.

The lights are set up at a 45 degree angle camera left, and about a 120 degree angle camera right.  This made my key light the one on the left, and I used to the right one for extra fill and to highlight the edge.  I did have to slightly adjust the lighting to keep the glare on these shiny instruments to a minimum.

I used two black flags (actually foam core covered with black paper) to keep the light from spilling backwards from the left light and towards the camera from the right light.

These were all shot with a Nikon D2x, 50mm 1.8, around f7.1 at ISO100.  I love how creamy and smooth the Nikon D2x’s files are.  Having a starting point of such a low ISO, there just aren’t any chunky pixels to deal with, just smooth transitions from light to dark.

After shooting, I went into Photoshop and removed the fishing line and made sure the background was actually black and not just dark.

As always, I’m available for any kind of photo assignment.  Please drop me a line to discuss your photo needs.