Gidi Williams

Photo’s of Products have been a passion which I could never fulfill 100% as I grew up and matured as a young photographer. I had experimented with macro lenses, 25ASA trannie film, very sturdy tripods and then went on to flash setups which were so exotically cumbersome and such an utter failure. I had worshiped the Kodak trannie because at one stage in my life it was so very easily available to me. It was also so extremely predictable in other avenues of picture-taking. But my love for the 36 x 28 mm format dwindled as product imaging could not be perfected to my standards.

Then I was given a 4X5 sheet film camera. My life changed forever ! The sheer magic of sharpness, precise definition and resolution as well as color fidelity all came into one as large format, perfectly exposed crisp transparencies of product images multiplied into my signature repertoire. With large format equipment commercial products such as Tools, Crockery, Cutlery sets, unique drinking glasses, Stationery and Footwear do take so much longer to photograph in the studio. But the results were oh so very sweet and superb. Clients were hypnotically satisfied with images which reproduced magnificently into Brochures, Magazines , Posters and Catalogues. Even Newsprint paper was no problem.

I had just perfected 50ASA Fuji film trannies to a single sheet, four-exposure-ranged show-off, when digital cameras came onto the world scene. Sensing from the photographic industry and press releases that one could be left behind within a very short space of time I set about planning which digital model to target. Since I had had Canon cameras before I looked at nothing else as they were now too one of the leaders with their digital SLR’s.