It’s no secret that product photography is a highly specialized field that requires a lot of technical knowledge, both for the shoot itself and for the post production. Hi-tech products, with their highly reflective surfaces and subtle textures, provide additional challenges. Watch, in the timelapse video above, as Peter Belanger tackles a shoot for the cover of Macworld.

© Peter Belanger

Although his subject, the iPhone 3GS is small, Peter uses up to 9 Acute/D4 Heads at once with both grids and reflectors, more than plenty of photographers would use to light a whole person! A 3 D4 packs provide power to the sea of c-stands and strobes.

This shoot is from 2009, but Peter is still going strong and perfecting his craft. To learn more about his process and the the thinking behind his work, check out an interview he did over on The Verge. See more of his work at peterbelanger.com.

All images and quotes in this post are used with permission and ©Peter Belanger, all rights reserved; story is ©Profoto. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or re-post elsewhere without written permission.

Think you can’t take great portraits with just a single, unmodified light source? Think again!

Mark Wallace, for AdoramaTV, uses a Profoto D1 500 and some tricks involving a mirror to transform a bland, unflattering portrait into one with depth and pizazz. Unlike a magician, though, Mark’s happy to reveal his secrets.

Watch the video above and see more from Mark on AdoramaTV.

All video and quotes in this post are used with permission and ©Mark Wallace, all rights reserved; story is ©Profoto. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or repost elsewhere without written permission.

The Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) is an international, non-profit association supporting the interests of the photography and imaging magazine publishing industry. The association represents 29 independent photographic magazines. Each year the editors of the member magazines vote for the best products introduced to the market during the previous 12 months, taking into account innovation, cutting-edge technology, design, ease-of-use and the price to performance ratio of the products.

On May 6, 2013, TIPA named the Profoto Pro-B4 battery generator the Best Professional Lighting System. The motivation is as follows:

“The Profoto Pro-B4 1000 Air is designed to handle the toughest shoots and deliver groundbreaking features that expand the photographer’s creative freedom. These features include extremely short flash durations down to 1/25,000 second, fast full power recycling time of 1 second, and delivery of up to 30 flashes per second at lower power settings. Made for both studio and on-location work, the Pro-B4 is constructed in solid-cast aluminum with a rubber frame, and all connections are covered with protective lids. With an 11-stop power range, a fast radio sync system, and recharge (even while in use) in less than 45 minutes, the Pro-B4 truly defines what a pro unit should deliver.”

Needless to say, the guys at the office are bursting with pride.

©Andrea Belluso

Profoto is more than a brand and a line of products. It is also the place where some us work and spend our weekdays. Have you ever wondered who we are or what the thinking was behind the design of this or that piece of equipment? Then join us behind the scenes at Profoto!

Even though Profoto’s products have had a similar look and feel since the late 1960s, a lot of changes have been behind the scenes. One of the most important changes is the transition from mechanical hardware to digital software. But what does that really mean? Tommy Sundström, Software Engineer at Profoto, knows the answer.

“When you turn the dials on a mechanical generator, you physically reposition the components and conductors inside to redistribute the power. In a digital generator, on the other hand, there is a processor or a microcontroller that reads the position of the dials and tells the semiconductors how to distribute the power. In other words, you don’t actually move anything. You just tell the computer what to do.”

Released in 2002, the D4 was Profoto’s first digital generator. Since then, all flash packs, monolights and continuous light units have been digital: the Pro-8, the D1, the Pro-B4, ProDaylight, ProTungsten, etc.

“You have to go digital if you want the level of flexibility that these units offer,” says Tommy. “It’s also necessary if you want to have wireless control. In addition, a digital unit allows you to work with more user-friendly displays and continuously updated firmware. There are also a bunch of exciting new ideas that we’re working on right now that we couldn’t have dreamed of when we had mechanical units. But those are still classified.” (more…)

©Nick Fancher

Here’s something we don’t see very often. When was the last time you saw two different types of water frozen in a photograph? Not frozen because of temperature, but frozen by incredibly fast flash duration?

Our friends at Fstoppers are at it again. They’ve published a post by Nick Fancher detailing his test drive of the Profoto Pro-B4. Francher froze individual drops and captured streaks with a longer shutter speed. (more…)