Product Photography

Hello - I am new to this forum - actually ANY photography forum.

I am looking for some advice.

I have a wedding and beach photography business in Ocean City, Maryland, and have for 8 years.. However, I branched out 'accidentally' a couple of years ago, and am now very involved with seminar phtoography.

I am being approached by speakers and promoters, about photographing their products. I am a people poser, and am not familiar with product posing so to speak.

Is anyone familiar with the lighting and setting up of products?

These are all mostly notebooks, workbooks, spiral bounds, CDs and DVDs.
When offering them all together in one large package, they want to reinforce the 'thud factor' (how heavy/full of product the brown cardboard box is when it arrives on the doorstep.

Can anyone guide me? I need clear, well lit, no reflection photos.

I have the Canon 30D and 5 D, with an assortment of lenses. I have studio lighting and backdrops.

How do you make a CD and case stand up? Among other questions. Any and all offers of advice are greatly appreciated.

Mary

Light is light? Start with an umbrella. Keep a shadow for depth.

Maybe a medium wide angle lens fairly close.

So, if you get reflections, move the offending light.

Make a little bracket & tape it to the back. This stuff ain't rocket science?

** IMPORTANT LINKS: Studio Lighting ** (READ FIRST)
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=138912

I shot slides for products a few times. Shadows are your enemy.

Thank you for your input.
The shots I have looked at of course look perfect. I wanted to try to do as little post production work as possible, thinking it is mostly in the lighting and setup.

When I see 10 CD cases lined up in a row with the CDs in front of them, it makes me wonder how they really got them to stand up togehter like that. Tape makes perfect sense.

I did try shooting it with two umberella lights, and just could not seem to get it right.
I had (2) 3 inch notebooks, 6 spiral bound notebooks and about 30 Cds/DVDs to display in one photo. Trying to get them all in and not look cluttered, and at proper placement angles - AND look interesting to the eye.......well, I didn't get it first try.

I was trying to lay the entire product set out on a table and take the photo from above.
It was funny to watch, I imagine. But frustrating as I tried to get it perfect.

I was wondering if anyone had ever tried those light boxes that I have seen advertised.

I felt like it should be a fairly simple process. I have an opportunity to get some ongoing work doing products, but I want to get a process set up that works well every time, before I take on work that I would spend hours shooting or correcting in Photoshop.

I appreciate your advice. If those darned products would move into place and bend when I asked them to, like people do, it would work much better!
Thanks! Mary

FrankC - Thank you for the links to the posts on lighting. Informative, though mostly for portraits, still transferrable somewhat.

The ebay light tents work well, just size them to whatever size you need. You can use hot lights, or strobes. I use a pair of flourescents (that don't, for some reason, exhibit typical flourescent greening effects and so on) on each side of the light tent. Someone I know with a little bit more funds uses a pair of 580EX and ST-E2 wireless transmitter on both sides. It seems the common theme is that one needs light sources on both sides of the tent, angle them to achieve the shadow or lack of shadow that one wants, and then shoot. Minimal hassle and very often shadow-free.

Thank You ! That was very helpful.

I hesitated to invest in them. I do have equipment sitting here that looked too good not to own, and then.....it sits here looking at me.

I plan on being fully informed for future purchases and not just getting stuff because it's fun to own stuff!

I saw a u-shaped lighting set to go around the tents on 3 sides, but it seems quite unnecessary. I thought that the strobes should work well on each side (judging results by testing them at angles). The no shadows/even lighting effect is what I need to achieve. Nice whites, no cutting out in Photoshop.

Just be sure the one chosen is large enough to contain all of the product is the key.....got it. I am thinking the largest. Then I could shoot any size combinations as necessary.

Can you set products at different levels in those cubes??

Mary

You're welcome as for the gear, I guess we've all done it at some time or another. I wouldn't say I'm completely innocent..

Two lights are fine, because the light also bounces around the inside of the light tent and virtually eliminates the shadows (depending on the placement of objects and lights of course). For small objects, I have also had quite a lot of success placing one 430EX Speedlite on the top of the cube and firing it downwards towards the object. There's enough light bouncing around to kill all the shadows. I use that when I'm lazy to hook up the flouros I assume you have some monolights? You could use that as well. Positioning and metering would be pretty much the same.

Instead of the cloth backdrops they provide, I use a sheet of white cardboard and place it against the back of the tent, and on the floor of the tent. The cardboard curves 90 degrees, and eliminates the shadows caused by the right angle of the rear of the tent that have to be photoshopped out. Since it's white, no cutting is usually needed.

Here's a sample:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

I will be ordering the light tent today. Thank you so much for your thoughtful advice.
This is an opportunity I don't want to miss - and I want to do it well.

Flashlights are cool - it's all light. And after all, your 'nickname' IS Lightstream!

Really - thank you so much for your advice. Mary

Glad to be of help! All the best in your product photography endeavors. BTW, above image was not processed at all. Lazy ole me simply ran it through the batch watermarker after cropping out the excess white area. My goal is to PP less - I enjoy staring through the viewfinder, not so much staring at the monitor.

Also, I forgot to mention - if you want to raise the product, they make small little tables for the job, or you could just use a suitably white plastic container and place the object on top of it.

Blue tack hidden strategically behind objects works to hold them in place too. Some flashlights are perfectly cylindrical without a convenient pocket clip positioned to hold the wording at exactly the right angle, so a dot of blue tack helps prevent the silly things from rolling away at the most inconvenient of moments - usually just after I pick up the camera.

poster putty, or "blue tack" as mentioned above... kinda gummy, and never hets hard.

you could also get a piece of cloudy white plexiglass from a hardware store, and light from below, helps eliminate shadows in some situations.

a strip of poster board, cut to about 1.5" x 10" then folded into a square and scotch taped can make a little invisible booster to lift up a light item.

it sounds like you are shooting quite a spread, the light tent might not accomodate all your stuff. hard to say. post a working copy of your progress?

Mike - Thank you for your additions to the above answers.
It does seem a bit too agressive (the amount of objects) for a first time product shoot. Even though I am nto a beginner, this is new for me.
It does take more than just laying it all out and snapping. It takes some finesse and knowledge - and I appreciate ideas from experience. It give you just a bit of a jump on the learning curve.
Thanks the info on designing a white box for light items. I can do that right away.
All of these suggestions are so appreciated.

I will defintiely keep you all updated. And I plan on the shots being good enough to share!!

Mary