From my Watch collection

269A8068 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A8547 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A8580-Edit by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A8593 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A8748 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A8885 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A9134 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A9244 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A9272 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A9349 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A9379 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A1413 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A1701 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A1753 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A2790 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A2956 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A3132 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A3392 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A3414-Edit by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A3432 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

Hope you like. For more watch images check out my Flickr:

Watch Collection

Good pictures,

That it is what the thread is about.

Watches can certainly make a fun macro subject. I photograph them a lot, both for cataloging my collection and for the challenge.

Here's what I'd call a standard "catalog" shot. This was shot with 3 strobes-two overhead with shoot-through umbrellas, and one at lower power to the left about even with the table with a beauty dish. The "even left" trick was told to me by a collector friend who's also a professional photographer, and it can help "catch" details that otherwise flat lighting can hide. He initially suggested a beauty dish, which I didn't have at the time, but experimented a lot with different sized reflectors, snoots, barn doors, and even bare bulb(Norman heads). When I finally got a beauty dish, I had to agree with him that the difference was subtle but nice and worth it.

I used a 105mm Micro handheld for this-something that my friend suggested and that I found actually works quite well.

Here's more of an extreme macro-this is a non-magnetic balance wheel on an 1883. I don't remember the strobe configuration, but do know that I had the camera on a tripod with bellows and used a 55mm f/3.5 Micro. IIRC, this worked out to about 6x life size.

These photos are always fun to take also.

This one was made with a fairly primitive lighting set-up of two CFLs in clamp lights with paper over the reflectors and a large piece of poster board to act as something of a light tent. I definitely prefer the flexibility of strobes!

This one was made from a tripod, of course, since the exposure time was quite long.

To the OP:

A little technical data would be nice. What lens, what camera, etc.

Nice pictures.

To the OP:

 

A little technical data would be nice. What lens, what camera, etc.

 

Nice pictures.

Thanks!

For some of this I used natural light, carefully controlling for undesirable highlights. For others I used a portable studio with a self contained light source. I got it from amazon. I went with natural wood textures as a base for most of these which provided a rich, warm type of light and tones. I dont like that standard "catalog" style of images for these. They have character and deserve a bit of creativity, I try to make "portraits" out of them. The catalog look looks bland and boring, IMO. I prefer that type of light in contrast to a cold, sterile and flat look what some seem to prefer.

As far as equipment I used:

Canon 5d Mark IV camera

Canon 100mm f/2.8 L Macro lens

Lightroom (software)

Photoshop (software)

Again, thanks for looking and for the likes!

That it is what the thread is about.

Yeah, I guess I was out of line there. Thanks for reminding me.

I did a bunch of watches a while ago, and of course now I can't find any. But i played a little tonight with a couple of different macro setups.

Here's one with a "Compugraphic" typesetting lens, about 2:1, in a microscope adapter on a D7100:

One of the nice things about macros is that even cheap watches look kind of nice. You don't necessarily want stamped gears and rough milling in your pet timepiece, but for a picture...This with a 55 mm macro lens on a long extension.

I've been having fun with different macro setups. Too many variations to show here, but here's a 50/F2AI reversed, and mounted on two K extension sets for a total of about 96 mm. The advantage of this setup is that one can stop down the lens and gain some depth of field, which is sorely lacking in the compugraphics.

For me, I just love mechanical devices. One of the reasons I collect old film cameras. I also like armored vehicles, so it's not purely a matter of scale. Nice watches and great shots of them.

Imagine the ingenuity of the makers of these things.

Old boy and his tank

I was too excited about photographing this watch and showing it off(just bought it today) and didn't realize until I worked up the photo that the strobes hadn't managed to freeze the balance wheel.

As this one was handheld, I'm a bit surprised that the balance is the only place where motion blur holds up. Perhaps this is telling me that the balance amplitude is too high-I haven't even owned the watch 12 hours, so I haven't really checked how well it's timing.

I was too excited about photographing this watch and showing it off(just bought it today) and didn't realize until I worked up the photo that the strobes hadn't managed to freeze the balance wheel.

 

As this one was handheld, I'm a bit surprised that the balance is the only place where motion blur holds up. Perhaps this is telling me that the balance amplitude is too high-I haven't even owned the watch 12 hours, so I haven't really checked how well it's timing.

 

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Images look fine from a focus and exposure point of view. You should consider using a different background to make the watch pop up better, IMO. The color used in your examples has a similar hue to the watch itself.

Ive been using darker backgrounds like leather and wood to provide an ambience, a surrounding that makes the piece standout more. It also sefves to provide more warming light. Latest examples from a new member to the collection: a Tissot 1853 Seastar Powermatic 80

269A3607 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A3609 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A3615 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A3621 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A3637 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

269A3663 by Oscar Baez Soria, on Flickr

Images look fine from a focus and exposure point of view. You should consider using a different background to make the watch pop up better, IMO. The color used in your examples has a similar hue to the watch itself.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've used a few different colors in the past, and have always thought that stuff in the blue/purple range tended to look good for the most part. I need to keep experimenting with my backgrounds, though, as occasionally one particular color will make a certain watch really "pop,"

One thing I do try to balance, though, is that I am also a watch collector and often first and foremost I want a technically good photograph that will actually show the details I need to see on the watch. The markings and the like are of the utmost importance, and sometimes those take a lot of work and small tweaks of the light to really get them to "pop," I apologize if another poster in this thread(not you) is bothered by that statement, but in my case the photographs I take of watches are to...well...show the details of the watch.