Wine Bottles - The Subject from Hell

I used to write a wine column for a local paper, and I took photos of the wines I reviewed. I learned very quickly that wine bottles are just about the most difficult thing to photograph well because they reflect everything in the studio. Unless you want a nice reflection of an umbrella very clearly visible on the wine bottle, you're not going to be able to use an umbrella when setting up your lighting.

Today, I tried lighting a wine bottle from the top. I placed my 430EX in a small softbox at a height of about 8 feet, pointing directly down on the table (covered with a black sheet). I placed reflectors to the sides of the bottle to provide a bit of side light, without a lot of reflections.

First Try

Unfortunately, the reflectors gave more - and more obvious - reflections than I wanted. Also, the bottle label seemed a bit dark. I made the minor changes of moving the reflectors back until they were even wit the bottle, and I placed a sheet of white paper in front of the bottle to reflect a bit of light back onto the label. I also dropped the exposure by a stop to cut down reflections and dust specks.

Final Set Up

The result (with a bit of Photoshop touch up - mostly to remove dust on the bottle, repair nicks on the label, and to darken the gray-looking tabletop), looks pretty good. The reflections of the reflectors serve more to define the edges of the bottle than anything else.

Lessons Learned

1. Bottles are extremely difficult to photograph
2. Top lighting is a good approach
3. Controlling side reflections is difficult and exacting
4. Make sure to use clean, dust-free bottles, with clean labels
5. If shooting against a dark background, avoid overexposing the image - that brings out every defect in the bottle and label

I'm sure that you'll be seeing a lot more wine bottles in this blog.