How To Take The Perfect Coffee Shot (With Multiple Exposures)

I was at starbucks the other day and saw this cool looking Mug, and was thinking that this was the perfect mug to practice my product shots. I already had the shot I wanted, but the problem was I didn’t have enough coffee beans to cover the table. So, what I did was take multiple shots and moved the coffee beans from one shot to the next, until I got the whole table full of coffee. Here is how you do it…

The Setup Shot

It is crucial to use a tripod and keep all the photos perfectly aligned. In my case, I was using a D7000 on a tripod and was shooting at f2 at ISO 250 using an 85mm lens for that shallow depth of field look. My main light was an sb-600 thru a softbox @ 1/16. Then a silver reflector at the right side to fill the shadows a bit.

The Shots

I pre-focused my camera on the logo and moved to manual focus to keep everything constant. I started with the beans in front of the cup and moved them until I reached the very end of the table, taking one picture foe each area covered. It took me 5 shots to fill the whole table with beans.

Photoshop

For the Photoshop work, I started with the bottom beans and put the image on top of each other. Then it was a simple job of erasing away the un-beaned areas from eahc layer. I used a soft brush with te earaser to create better transitions.

Before and After shot of the layers

For finishing touches, I added a little bit of vignette and adjusted the layers and a bit of burn and dodge for the post processing.

Final Shot