54 frames for one photo: How Apple produces their product shots

Looking at an Apple commercial for an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, with the device so completely in focus, you might at first mistake it for a 3D rendering. It turns out it's real photography, however, incredibly painstaking photography. And it produces utterly fantastic results.

The most challenging aspect of shooting store panels for Apple is the balance between the size of the file and the depth of field. Often the products small enough that our depth of field is very narrow. In order for the product to appear entirely in focus, we have to shoot a number of focus zones, which are stitched together in post. This video is a stop motion video made from all of the focus zones that were shot for this iPod Touch. The number in the corner is the number of the focus zone. In the video you can see the progression of the focus march from front to back. For this left iPod Touch, it took 54 frames just to get the product to appear completely in focus.

Just one of many examples of the effort Apple puts into not only making and packaging their products, but producing everything that surrounds their products. It might sound crazy, almost perfectionistic, but if they put this much into the photography, imagine what they put into the device?

We won't be covering these kinds of techniques anytime soon in our iPhoneography series, but if it's something you want to play around with -- even to a much smaller degree -- then jump into our iPhone Photography Forum and have at it

Check out the video example via the link below.

Source: Dwight Eschliman Photography via @duncanwilcox, @sdw