Product Photo Advice

Creed

Creed

Suspended / Banned
Messages
341
Edit My Images
Yes
Have been asked by a friend if I can take some pictures of some new products that he is getting in (runs an online computer store)

Just wondering if anyone can offer any advice on taking shots of products. He has some black and white acrylic sheets on order to use as backdrops and I'm using a 300d with the 18-55 and 55-200 kit lens's

Edit: I didn't know if these really belonged in here or in the macro / closeup section
 
Lighting is the key here. Will you be using available , flash or studio lighting?
 
I am certainly no expert, but

My job involves photographing ceramics (using a minolta dynax 7d) after spending £500 on the camera body mr boss man decided everything else would have to be super cheap (including the lenses and lighting)


I would say that getting your lighting right is the most inportant thing.

If you can afford (or your friend) get some studio lights with softboxes

if like me you are having to work on a tight budget. you can make soft boxes quite easily with carboard and grease proof paper.

Personaly after quite a lot of experimenting, I found that the most successfull set up was, one light which is situated behind the backdrop and pointing up at a white ceiling.

I then turn other lights off so that there is as little glare as possible,

then I set the camera on a tripod (with the onboard timer set) in Aperature mode and set around F8 (so as to get the sweet spot on the lens and there fore hopefully the sharpest image), and trust the light meter to set the shutter speed (typically it looks to require around 2 - 4 seconds)

I am sure the experts will scream omg dont do that, but it seems to work

The great thing with product photography is that you know that it isnt going to move so on a tripod you coudl set a 30 second shutter speed and not worry abotu blur.
 
What are you photographing, what kit do you have and what do you want them to look like? Have you or your friend seen any examples of work that you'd like to emulate?
 
Some really good advice thanks alot

Well the kit is in my sig, just the normal 300D kit I'm afraid... Will have some nice backdrops but nothing more than that, not wanting to use flash as some things will be metal so will be using what ever lighting is available... this will probably consist of things like the light in the room and a bedside lamp etc as can't afford proper studio lighting

It's primarily water cooling equipment for PC's so will be water-blocks and radiators etc. It's quite a small business and he is used to just using a point and shoot digital to take the photo's but I offered to help so he can get some better shots and I can get some much needed experience. I'll post some pictures for feedback when I get them done.

On a side note as I'm new to this (not meaning to side track my own thread) but what do you mean by the sweet spot on the lens?

Also would you advise shooting in Raw or JPG?
 
Don't rule out flash because you're photgraphing metal. Flash is more controllable than available light if you're inside a room with fixed ceiling lights. I'd try and get some gels to colour the flash lights or desk lamps to give you more creativity with the background.

The sweet spot is where the lens produces it's sharpest pictures. Some lenses are sharp at nearly every aperture but some, like my 28-105 are soft as anything at any aperture wider than f8.

I'd shoot in RAW too just to help with getting the colour balance right if you're shooting with different light sources.
 
every lens has a spot that gives the sharpest/ most pleasing image, usually around f8 and half way through the zoom range.

if you have the capability to shoot raw, do it and adjust as needed in post processing. It's going to be better to do that under difficult lighting conditions than it would be using jpegs as you'll have a little more control over the exposure and the highlights and shadows.

If it's just small pc parts your snapping, go get yourself a desktop studio from maplin, it'll make a big difference to both the lighting and the presentation for less than £20
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top