Need help on lens for small product shots

[krisgel]

Hi,

I am buying a 20D which I will use for product shots for dietary supplements (from the size of a chapstick tube to a size of large can of Chunky soup) to be used on my e-commerce site.

I want the pics to appear with the clearity and image size as the product shots at www.landofnod.com (http://www.landofnod.com/)

I also want the lens to be a very versatile lens for taking many kinds of shots for pleasure.

Budget = under $900 or $1200 if suggesting 1 lens for the product shooting and one good versatile lens for shooting things for pleasure, such as pets people, still life, landscape.

Thanks.

[DaveG]

Hi,

I am buying a 20D which I will use for product shots fro dietary supplements (from the size of a chapstick tube to a size of large can of Chunky soup)

I want the pics to appear with the clearity and image size as the product shots at www.landofnod.com (http://www.landofnod.com)

I also want the lens to be a very versatile lens for taking many kinds of shots for pleasure.

Budget = under $900 or $1200 if suggesting 1 lens for the product shooting and one good versatile lens for shooting things for pleasure, such as pets people, still life, landscape.

Thanks.

I'm not sure if there is any one les to do what you suggest.

I'd start with a 100mm macro. Sharp, fast and can easily be used as a general purpoose lens.

Then comes a tilt/shift lens. Canon makes three of them a 24, 45 and 90mm. You will be able to control your depth of field and get other lens movements from lenses like this. You should look for some large format web sites that discuss the merits of camera movements; but I can assure you that product photographers use camera movements when ever they can.

I'd be inclined to get the 90mm for product photography. It will give you a better perspective than a shorter lens and will give you enough room between the camera and the subject to use reflectors and such. I'd say that THIS would be you lens but I'm not sure if it would focus close enough for everything.

[krisgel]

I'm not sure if there is any one les to do what you suggest.

I'd start with a 100mm macro. Sharp, fast and can easily be used as a general purpoose lens.

Then comes a tilt/shift lens. Canon makes three of them a 24, 45 and 90mm. You will be able to control your depth of field and get other lens movements from lenses like this. You should look for some large format web sites that discuss the merits of camera movements; but I can assure you that product photographers use camera movements when ever they can.

I'd be inclined to get the 90mm for product photography. It will give you a better perspective than a shorter lens and will give you enough room between the camera and the subject to use reflectors and such. I'd say that THIS would be you lens but I'm not sure if it would focus close enough for everything.

Hi,

Please excuse my lack of knowledge. What is camera movements? And which exact 90mm lens are you reffering to. Thanks.

[DaveG]

Hi,

Please excuse my lack of knowledge. What is camera movements? And which exact 90mm lens are you reffering to. Thanks.

The lens is the Canon 90mm f2.8 TS-E.

I wrote about camera movements a short time ago. Rather than rewrite it I've copied and edited some of that and here it is:

The chief advantage of Large Format are the camera movements. The lens sits out at the end of the camera on a flexible bellows. If you tilt the lens down, while keeping the film back upright, the depth of field can be made to "lay down". That way with a large aperture you can still can keep near and far objects in focus. Think of flowers in an alpine meadow with the mountains sharp in the background.

Sideways tilt (actually called swing) can be used to change (say) the depth of field from being close to you on the left and then heading off on a diagonal. This could have the practical use of standing next to a building and being able keep it all in focus as it "moves" away from you, and again at a large aperture.

You can "rise" the lens and this will correct the "falling over backwards" error that you get when you tip the camera up to photograph a building.

There are a lot more movements but they all depend on the negative being inside this great big image circle, and the bigger the image circle the greater the movement possibility. As you use movements you are just using a different part of this image circle. The image circle on the Canon Tilt/Shift lenses are a lot bigger than regular 35 mm lens and for the same reasons.

Canon makes three tilt/shift lenses. They are completely manual by the way, with no AF at all. The Nikkor 35mm shift lens that I used to own didn't even have diaphragm control with the camera. You had to pre-set the aperture before you took a picture, and while I suspect that these lenses are the same, I'm not sure.

Before anyone runs out and buys a bellows so they can adapt their current lenses to some kind of ad hoc tilt/shift version there's a couple of things to consider.

A 35mm lens makes an image circle that will be just barely large enough to cover the 35mm format it's designed for. When you tilt/shift you are moving a rectangle around inside of that circle and if it's too small, you can easily run out and see vignetting - really is should be called "fall off". Large format photographers use movements (tilt, shift, swing and others) all the time, and in that niche of photography lenses are more valuable if they have larger image circles. Now with the 1.6 conversion factor with Canon's EF lenses we do have a larger than needed image circle. Unfortunately we have no way to control and actuate the diaphragm.

Back to original stuff:

If I was doing product photography I would be focused fairly closely on a product and that means that I don't have much depth of field even with a small aperture. Let's say I want to photograph a bottle of shampoo. I could have it square to the camera and I won't have any depth of field problems. But if I have it on an angle to make it look three dimensional and more "real" then one side of the bottle is going to be closer than the back. Now there's a chance that even at f16 (or the smallest aperture your lens will go to) there isn't enough d of f to cover and keep everything sharp.

With a regular camera/lens I'm out of luck and depth of field when I run out of aperture. But with a large format camera or a tilt/shift lens on my 20D I would "swing" (sideways tilt) the lens and the depth of filed could follow the angle of the shampoo bottle. I could add a little rise to the lens in order to see a little of the top of the shampoo bottle's cap.

Now this is a very brief explanation and you should have a look at a large format site where camera movements are discussed with almost as much frequency as how slow can we handhold out cameras! I do have to say that product photography is a very technical and very complicated business. Those beauty shots of food in a magazine or even supermarket food flyer photography is difficult to do, and the work is being done by very knowledgeable photographers. It may look easy but it sure isn't!

[krisgel]

Dave,


Will the 100mm Canon Macro exhibit curvature on vertical lines when taking photos of tall products like a shampoo bottle?

[DaveG]

There should be very little barrel distortion with the 100 macro, as it's very well corrected.

[Marshall]

Try the tamron 90mm 2.8 & put the money saved towards another lens. Or the tamron 28-75 2.8 which by concensus is a favourite walk-about lens.