Most people assume product videography is the easy version of what we do, the subject doesn’t move, there’s no weather, no client walking around a set. A recent shoot of an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Double Balance Wheel Openworked, a black ceramic piece listed at AED 1,000,000, for a Dubai dealer proved that assumption wrong in about the first ten minutes. Nothing about filming a watch this small, this reflective and this valuable works the way car or property video work does, and almost every part of our usual setup had to change.
The finished piece: an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Double Balance Wheel Openworked in black ceramic, shot on location for a Dubai dealer
Why we brought the studio to the watch, not the watch to the studio
The watch never left the dealer’s premises. At AED 1,000,000, moving it to an external studio wasn’t worth the risk, so we set up a Foldio3 portable studio at the client’s own location instead, a foldable lightbox with built-in dimmable LED lighting, compact enough to pack in and assemble on site. That’s a fairly standard call for high-value product work, but it changes the job in a practical way: instead of controlling a fixed studio environment, you’re building a controlled lighting setup inside whatever room the client has available, and the dimming control on the Foldio3’s lights matters more here than it would on a bigger product, since even a small change in output shifts how the ceramic and crystal pick up highlights.
The first ten minutes aren’t filming, they’re preparation
Before a single frame was shot, the watch was cleaned thoroughly with a microfiber cloth made specifically for high-end watches, not a generic lens cloth. At macro distance, dust and fingerprints that would be invisible to the eye show up as obvious flaws on camera, and an openworked dial has far more surface area, edges and small components for that dust to sit on than a solid dial ever would. Skipping that step means finding the problem in review rather than before you start, which costs far more time than the cleaning itself.
Turntable and macro lens: getting motion without moving the camera
We ran a Sony FX3 with a Sony FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS lens, recording in 4K at 60fps, locked off on a tripod. The camera itself never moved. Instead, the watch sat in a dedicated watch holder on a turntable, which handled all the motion. That combination is what makes rotating product footage look clean, a handheld camera orbiting a subject this small would introduce shake that’s magnified enormously at macro distances, but a fixed camera and a rotating subject gives smooth, repeatable motion every time. Shooting at 60fps also gave us the option to slow the rotation down slightly in the edit without it looking choppy, which matters when the whole point of the shot is showing fine detail. The 90mm macro was non-negotiable for this piece specifically, an openworked movement has components measured in fractions of a millimetre, and a standard lens simply can’t resolve that level of detail.
Lighting a surface that reflects everything
Black ceramic doesn’t behave like steel or gold. It has a deep, glass-like reflectivity that picks up every light source, reflection and shadow in the room, and an openworked dial adds a sapphire crystal into that mix as well. We lit the watch with two Nanlite PavoTube II 6C tube lights, positioned to control exactly where the reflections fell rather than eliminate them entirely, since some reflection is what gives ceramic its depth on camera. Alongside that, we used a black board as a flag to cut reflections that would otherwise show up directly on the watch dial. Without it, the light sources themselves end up mirrored in the crystal, which reads as a distraction rather than a highlight.
Capturing a movement with two balance wheels without losing it in glare
The watch’s patented double balance wheel mechanism is visible through the openworked dial and case back, exposing the 245-part Calibre 3132 movement. The challenge was capturing both balance wheels clearly without losing them in reflections from the glareproofed sapphire crystal. That meant lighting for depth rather than just exposure, enough separation between the different layers of the movement that it reads as two working mechanisms rather than a flat cluster of metal, which took more adjustment than typical product work would.
The one rule that overrides every other decision
Not every detail visible through the viewfinder belongs in the final video. That’s the principle behind one of the most important, and least glamorous, parts of a dealer shoot like this one, knowing what to deliberately leave out. Every frame was checked to make sure the watch’s serial number never appeared, on the case back, on the movement, anywhere a macro lens could pick it up without anyone intending to feature it. Serial numbers tie directly to a specific piece and its ownership records, so an identifying number sitting in a published video isn’t just an oversight, it’s a real confidentiality risk for both the dealer and whoever ends up owning the watch. It’s a small detail compared to lighting or lens choice, and it would be easy to miss if nobody was actively looking for it, but on a shoot like this it’s treated as a hard rule rather than a nice-to-have, checked on every angle, every close-up, every frame of the turntable video before anything gets handed over.
Frequently asked questions
Do you shoot watches in a studio or on location? It depends on the value and the client’s preference. For a piece this expensive, we brought a Foldio3 portable studio to the dealer’s own premises rather than moving the watch, which is generally the safer call for high-value pieces.
What kind of portable studio setup works for small, reflective products like watches? A foldable lightbox with dimmable LED lighting built in, like the Foldio3, gives enough control over light output to fine-tune how a reflective surface picks up highlights, without needing a full studio’s worth of gear on site.
What lens do you use for watch and jewelry videography? A dedicated macro lens is essential, we used a Sony FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS on this shoot specifically because of how much fine detail an openworked movement has. A standard lens won’t resolve components at that scale.
What recording settings did you use for the watch video? We shot 4K at 60fps, which gave us the resolution to hold up on close, detailed footage and enough frame rate headroom to smooth out the turntable motion slightly in the edit without it looking choppy.
How do you avoid reflections on ceramic and glass surfaces? Careful light positioning and negative fill. We used two Nanlite PavoTube II 6C tubes placed to control where reflections fell, plus a black board as a flag to block reflections that would otherwise land directly on the dial or crystal.
Why does the video use a turntable instead of a moving camera? A fixed camera with a rotating subject produces smooth, consistent motion, especially important at macro distances where even small camera movement is heavily magnified. The camera stayed locked on a tripod while the turntable and watch holder did the work.
Why do you avoid showing the serial number in watch content? Serial numbers tie directly to a specific piece and its ownership records. Keeping it out of published video is standard practice for protecting client and owner confidentiality, and we treat it as a non-negotiable rule on every watch shoot.
Do you only shoot cars and real estate, or also products like this? Cars and real estate make up most of our work, but product videography, including pieces like this watch, is part of what we shoot as well. The same core skills, controlling reflections, working at the right scale, and lighting for the material in front of us, carry across all of it.
Whether it’s a supercar, a luxury watch or a high-value product, the approach is the same: control the environment, control the reflections and make the subject look exactly as it should.
We shoot videography across Dubai for automotive, real estate, events and high-value products alike. See our videography services or get in touch about your next shoot.