Hi all

I have just been asked to give a price for "object photography" of 50 wedding dresses on a live model.

I am not sure how to approach the shooting. Normally I would put the object on a turn table with click stops. But these are very big dresses that is on a model. That would require a very big turn table that I do not know where to find. I therefore thouht about keeping the model still and than move the camera. But I need a white back ground all the way around to make a "floating" feeling.

Any suggestions to what I should do in this situation??

Hmm,  I have not tried Easypano Object Model software because I am doing OM work using Flash MX.  I finished 2 om's last week.

http://www.360texas.com/services/sr/yield/index.htm

For other Flash Object work the person on the blue daisy wheel and the white car lower left on page:

http://www.360texas.com/services/om/index.htm 

Well be prepared for a +++ lot ++++ of work. But if they are willing to pay.. then you might consider the following.

I was using a Canon 5d and RAW .cr2 images.. each image was 11 to 12 mb. An empty CF told me I could take 120 raw images.  On a 2gb card I could take 3  36 image sets (total 108 images) before dumping the raw images to my notebook.  Bring with you at least 3  Compact Flash cards.

Make or buy a rotating platform.  Wedding dresses consider 1 meter diameter.  The OM's of the two models (man and woman) could see their feet so a smaller platform worked ok.. 45 cm diameter worked ok.

Mark and place numbers 1 ,2 ,3 ->36 the outer edge of the platform every 10 degrees.   You will need at least 2 people to do this work.  1 person taking the photo's.. 1 person on the floor rotating the platform.

Besure to get signed model release forms.. assuming more than 1 model person involved.

Use studio lighting bright enough to be able to use camera setting of at least 125th second.  I got some out of focus images because of low lighting - and the models do breath and caused movement.  Set up using a flat chrome blue (high contrast to wedding dress white).  This will let you color remove blue to flat white later in photo shop.

Besure to test step up the camera with a camera learned white balance using an 18% gray card.  All image will have the same tone or white balance.

Take 36 images.  After you start taking the single photos.. if the model accidently moves from position... STOP erase the photo's and start over.  mid point the male did accidently loose balance and stepped off and back on the platform... [ I continued to take the photo's]  later during post processing.. I noticed in the image sequence.. the models body was in a different position.  A lot of photoshop work.. later and the image sequence looked better but not perfect because the model's top of pants was at a different elevation.  It would have been better to have stopped and started again at the zero 0 platform mark and reshot the image sequence.

Once the 36 images were complete.. take them into photoshop {shot RAW 11mb filesize}  convert to TIF and save that set.  Convert all to full dimension sized JPEG.  Use something like Fluid Mask to remove the background (substitute background blue to flat white).

Resize your edited images to 360 high x 240 pixels wide and about 10kb small.

Now you have 36 small images ready to create your object model 'Object'.

It took me 32 man hours to create only 2 object models.  Very labor intensive.

Hi Dave

I just talked to a photographer. He suggested renting a warehouse or similar. Placing the model on the floor, take some measurements and then move the camera instead.

The problem with a rotator is 1) I do not know where to get one that is big enough 2) It have to be really big because some of the dresses are really huge.

Any advice is appreciated :o)