What equipment would you recomend for product shots?

Hi guys,

I do not know if this is the right forum for this, but I figured it was a strting point.

I am the Sales Manager for a Car Audio/ Home Audio company and we are expanding into online sales. Because of my interest in photography I am being asked to start shooting the product shots for the new website. I am primarily a candid and Landscape photographer so I am not equiped to shoot product shots.

So I am coming to all of you to see what you would recomend for equipment in order to take consistent quality shots of our products. These are things like Stereos, Amplifiers, Speakers, Subwoofers etc.

The nice thing is that the company will be purchasing any necessary equipment I will need, other than my camera of course, as long as it is cheeper than hiring someone to take all the product shots.

Thank you for all the help.

Juan

The key to catalog and web product photography is consistency.
Many companies had gone so far as to establish photo specs so that any pro can replicate the shots.

I suggest that you start by finding examples of similar products that you like and that your company's advertising manager likes. Then reverse engineer the lighting.

Since all your products will be in a size range that can be handled by a reasonably sized shooting table you might want to start with that idea.

This is probably large enough.

Then consider lighting; The primary goal is to arrive at a lighting scheme that can be replicated and used for all the products. That takes planning, testing, and then creating lighting diagrams.

Good luck.

-Strobes, D-Lite 4's are plenty powerful enough with all the diffusion you'll need; you'll need lots of DOF too, so that'll require power.
-Softboxes (even smallest sized ones will work)
-A reflector to put in front of the product

That's pretty much all and the rest you can pick up from trial and error I think.

And lots of experimenting.

David & Arthur make good points. Just to offer alternatives, look at the knife & Browning threads here:
FAQ - Studio Lighting

Keep in mind that the short focus distances used in photographing small electronic items needs to have the very shallow DOF offset by the use of smaller apertures. For example, 50mm on APS-C at a shooting distance of 3' has frame area of 10" x 15" and a DOF zone of 4.4" with f/11. So you need to use flash units up close and with a fair amount of output power. The AB400 is stated to have f/11 ouput at a distance of 10' at ISO100, which would certainly be sufficient power even in a softbox.

Thanks guys for all the good suggestions. I will look into all of them.

Anyone else with any other suggestions?

Thanks
Juan

Juan A wrote in post #11680839
Thanks guys for all the good suggestions. I will look into all of them.

Anyone else with any other suggestions?

Thanks
Juan

TS-E 90 or TS-E45

windpig wrote in post #11680896
TS-E 90 or TS-E45

Thanks, But I am looking more into lighting solutions as well as display solutions. I will be trying to get some new glass down the road. I was thinking some macro lenses. Anyways, thanks for the suggestion.

Juan

A T/S lens is going to be your best bet but if you don't need the best of the best then I'd just go with a normal macro, maybe a 60mm one.

'Macro' typically means that the subject is reproduced on film/sensor at magnification 1:5 thru 5:1...0.2x scale thru 5x. Non-macro lenses readily achieve 0.1x. I rather doubt that you need much magnification for shooting car stereos...a faceplate area of 182mm x 112mm (Kenwood car entertainment with monitor) has to fit in an APS-C frame, which means only 0.1x magnification!

That's true Wilt, however, I say a macro because of the IQ in the f/11-f/22 range and for whatever else that may be better with these jobs. Correct me if I'm wrong, I guess I'm already used to my crappy zoom to suck past f/8.

SuperHuman21 wrote in post #11682492
That's true Wilt, however, I say a macro because of the IQ in the f/11-f/22 range and for whatever else that may be better with these jobs. Correct me if I'm wrong, I guess I'm already used to my crappy zoom to suck past f/8.

True macro lenses do perform better than many/most non-macro lenses at very close focus distances. Also, macro lenses often are 'flat field corrected' rather than having curvature of the focus plane.

If you shoot on APS-C, small aperture diffraction happens whether or not the lens is 'macro' or not, as it is purely the result of light rays bending significantly to pass thru the small aperture.

As for 'zoom', there are really good zooms that rival fixed focal length lenses, and there are very mediocre zooms designed to offer 10x zoom range and affordability for the snapshooter.

Wilt wrote in post #11685794
True macro lenses do perform better than many/most non-macro lenses at very close focus distances. Also, macro lenses often are 'flat field corrected' rather than having curvature of the focus plane.

If you shoot on APS-C, small aperture diffraction happens whether or not the lens is 'macro' or not, as it is purely the result of light rays bending significantly to pass thru the small aperture.

As for 'zoom', there are really good zooms that rival fixed focal length lenses, and there are very mediocre zooms designed to offer 10x zoom range and affordability for the snapshooter.

No offense guys, but this has got a little off topic. I do appreciate the help, but I am wondering if anyone else has any lighting or box ideas.

Thanks
Juan

Wilt wrote in post #11685794
True macro lenses do perform better than many/most non-macro lenses at very close focus distances. Also, macro lenses often are 'flat field corrected' rather than having curvature of the focus plane.

If you shoot on APS-C, small aperture diffraction happens whether or not the lens is 'macro' or not, as it is purely the result of light rays bending significantly to pass thru the small aperture.

As for 'zoom', there are really good zooms that rival fixed focal length lenses, and there are very mediocre zooms designed to offer 10x zoom range and affordability for the snapshooter.

Right, but wouldn't the amount of diffraction differ at certain f-stops? My zoom's f/11 (extended out to 105mm) looks just as bad as my macro's f/18 if I remember correctly. That's why I ask. I don't have experience with nice zooms but it'd be nice to test some out in some of the stores here. I won't buy any nice ones for a while though as I don't have a need for 'em.

Juan A wrote in post #11688515
No offense guys, but this has got a little off topic. I do appreciate the help, but I am wondering if anyone else has any lighting or box ideas.

Thanks
Juan

Not a prob Juan. You can always learn from this too. What else do you need to know? We've given you some good advice so far.

Juan A wrote in post #11688515
No offense guys, but this has got a little off topic. I do appreciate the help, but I am wondering if anyone else has any lighting or box ideas.

Thanks
Juan

Softboxes or translucent diffuser panels; studio flash heads (with modelling lights); white reflector cards