And if you knew anything about product photography you might have asked the op what it was he was actually photgraphing instead of being a sphincter! In fact, you sound like you could do with an enama deary.
How about asking what the product is, will it be shown simply on the web or may it also be for a brochure, how inportant is colour accuracy etc....
Ben, if its just for the web don't get too hung up on colour accuracy, the web screws that right up and by the time your customers see you stuff on their monitor it will look completely different to when you view it on yours. I was in the same place as you and wasted a mountain of time on this one aspect of my product shots as our main speciality is bespoke glaze colours. Its good to have a knowledge of proper colour management and a well thought through workflow etc but for me, the most important aspect of product shots for the web is more about getting a bit of drama into your shots and making the product look alive on the screen. You will achieve that with clever lighting and shadow and the best way to learn that for your specific product is to simply play. Whilst I agree that what Garry sells is fantastic value and well made, I found it easier to use any old continuous lights with various reflectors and black card to suss out the look I wanted and how my product was best lit. Then once i had the basics nailed I tried flash and I can tell you what I learned with just a lightbulb and some tracing paper and mirrors ect made it a lot easier to get the hang of getting that effect with studio flash.
Thats just me and you will get lots of other advice from the very knowledgeable guys and most of the girls here but if you need to get any flash lighting ask Garry and buy the lencarta stuff, its as good as you will ever need and blows that ebay crud out of the water.
If you want to see my site PM me and I will send you a link, it's only just gone live and is still being polished but the pics are all done.
Best of luck with it mate
Steve.
I agree with most of these points.
Back in the early 90's I found myself for a short while having to make do with nothing in the way of equipment, and had to buy some
second hand photoflood lamps for product shots.
Managing without the right equipment concentrates the mind, and is an invaluable teaching aid.
Up to a point, having good equipment, and too much of it, tends to steer us towards bland results, which is the opposite of the right direction, most of the time.
What lighting is really about is the creation of the right shadows in the right places, and photographers are judged on what they don't light rather than on what they do light.
And what posing and camera position is about is showing the qualities and the benefits of the subject - whether that's a beautiful woman, very good industrial design or a tin of baked beans.
Using a continuous light as a learning tool can be invaluable, but only if it's a filament bulb. Cheap LED or fluorescent lamps produce false colours, and those colours cannot be corrected.
When it comes to product photography (and other subjects, to a lesser extent) it's really all about the shape and reflective qualities of the subject. There are a lot of people around who seem to think that they know how to photograph certain subjects, such as towels, or shoes, or clothing or whatever, but generally they just don't get it, because although there are standard approaches to basic lighting arrangements it's really about what you want to show, what you want to emphasise and what you want to hide, and this means that people need to understand light from a basic physics viewpoint, and also need to understand how to present the benefits of the subject well, which requires an understanding of marketing too.
Anyone who is photographing their own products for their own business should understand the importance of the marketing aspects, and can learn about the physics of lighting, partly by studying that excellent book Light: Science & Magic (which is all about lighting in general, it just uses still life subjects for illustration, as I do). Generally, someone who is keen to learn can do much better than the average 'professional' photographer with just a bit of practice, and just about everyone can do much better than the average 'pack shot' photographers, who generally just run a production line of consistent mediocraty. There have been some outstanding examples of fast learning on this forum, the one that really jumps out and hits me is
a thread on photographing flowers, the guy had absolutely no idea to start with and ended up with pretty outstanding results after just a few sessions.
Strange that we had a conversation about +/- 300k on the phone then.
No I didn't.I said that the maximum variation was 300K, that's a maximum of +/ - 150K. And I was talking to you about the previous (original) model of the SmartFlash anyway.
