Product Photography equipment for a beginner ???

Hi all,

I am going to make a website and its all about clothing. I would like to shoot by myself so i need some advice for product photography at home with limited budget.

1. Camera and Lens: I am going to get 450D as a starter camera and what lens should i buy next to it? I was thinking 50mm f/1.8 II or i stay with 18-55mm kit lens? As i know kit lens is good but not solid in picture quality. 50mm will be equivalent to 80mm on 450D so i kit from a good distance i will have a good picture quality, and i can later use that for portrait shots as well.

2. Background: Products will be mainly tops and jeans so they will be put on half size dolls , you know those ones without heads and has a tshirt put on standing at the window of a shop.

So i need a big white paper background with stands? so that i can put a table under the paper (paper will be rolled on the table) put the doll on the table and shoot like this.

3. Lighting: What will be the best budget lighting solution? Speedlite 580EX II ? or a softbox? Or both? I think i need to have another continuous light hanging behind the background so that background will be complete white?

Any other thing i need ?

Thanks for your time in advance answering

It's "good enough" for 12X18" prints, so why wouldn't it be good enough for web images? Get the 50 if you want it, but you don't need it for these product shots.

It only has to be bigger that the doll at the distance you shoot. A piece of bent 30X40" cardboard or roll of wrapping paper might be big enough.

You could use one light with an umbrella + one for the background. Or read through this:
Another DIY light box, with build and test pics

White would be good, but what's wrong with the light gray you'd get with one light?

A 580ex is a flash. A softbox is a modifier. You will need both flashes and modifiers.

Also, you'd be better off looking at monolights or continuous lighting, not hotshoe flashes.

The thing that makes the 50mm f/1.8 really stand out is how much less light you can work with to still get great pictures. Sure the pictures may be sharper, but since you are working with a fairly lit area and the 18-55 still produces wonderful pictures, I don't see any reason to "upgrade" to a 50mm. It just doesn't have any advantages since the clarity may be lost when uploaded to the internet. Plus with the 18-55, you can get different types of shots without switching lenses!

+1 on staying with the 18 - 55 for your application. Lighting and modifiers are more important. You even could buy a tripod (for a longer exposure) and light it with cheapo lights from a hardware store providing you diffuse the light through a (big) modifier

thanks alot for the opinions