Excellent Product Photography

If you were to ask me what one of the most important aspects of product photography was, I’d tell you it was the lighting. It’s hard to cover such a broad and complicated topic in just one post, but I will give you a general idea of what product photography lighting looks like and some of the better ways to use lighting.

If you are shooting outdoors, the light is most dramatic in the early morning with the sunrise, or in the late afternoon and early evening with the sunset. In the middle of the day the sun is often too bright and will make photographing the subject more difficult. It’s not impossible, just more difficult. So I suggest using either morning or evening for outdoor photography.

Indoors is usually more ideal for product photography, however. The goal of product photography is to make the product in question look as good as possible. If you shoot indoors in a studio you will have more control of the lighting used, which is always a good thing. The more control the better off you will be. If you have access to a lighting studio you will have the most control. Whether or not you have professional lighting, the same techniques apply.

You need to have a fill light and a main light at the very least. The main light is exactly what it sounds like, the main light. This means it will be brightest and closest to the subject. The fill light is intended to be used to fill in any unwanted shadows that the main light doesn’t cover. It enhances the photo. It will therefore be farther away from the subject and will be less bright. After you have your main light and fill light set up, you can think about alternative additional lighting. Sometimes a back light is very useful. A back light can light up the background, or the subject. If you light up the subject in the back, it tends to set the subject off of the background. This is usually a good idea so that the subject doesn’t look like it’s floating in mid air. Sometimes however you will want to create this illusion, such as for online store displays.

The better your product photography looks, the more you’ll be able to charge for your services. In the age of digital product photography we don’t need to worry about how many shots we use because our “film” is now digital and is unlimited. This allows us to broaden our horizons and take many more photographs. It never hurts to experiment and try new things. I suggest you get out there and try your hand at experimenting with different lighting techniques!

Any type of photography that is blurry, is not going to be considered acceptable, unless you’re some sort of fine art photographer and then maybe you can get away with blurry photos. In the commercial photography world though, you absolutely must have photos that are crisp and sharp. Anything less than perfect and people are going to find a different photographer and you’ll be out a job. Therefore you must do everything in your power to ensure that you’re providing your clients with top notch images, and part of this is making sure that the photos are sharp and not blurry.

A tripod will be a great help to you in creating excellent product photography images. There are lots of different kinds of tripods, but it really depends on what you are shooting when it comes to actually choosing the tripod that’s right for you. You’re going to need to decide what weight of tripod you’ll need. If you’re going to be traveling a lot you might want a lighter weight tripod so that you can move it without feeling like you’re hauling around a tank. Heavier tripods are nicer a lot of the time though because they aren’t easily moved. Most of the point of a tripod is to make the camera stationary. Heavier tripods will make sure the wind doesn’t move it, that you don’t bump it over, and will prevent other types of movement.

The heavier duty a tripod is, the less likely it is to break as well. It’s never a good idea to buy a tripod that is going to break on you the next day. Another aspect of tripods to think about is the head. It’s important to buy a tripod that has a decent revolving head. Some tripods have heads that move around easier than others. The easier it is to rotate the head the easier your job as a photographer will be and you won’t feel like you’re fighting with the tripod all the time.

Amazon is a great place to buy a tripod. Here are a couple that I recommend.

Carbon Fiber Tripod with Ball Head
3-Way Panhead

You can’t go wrong with either of these tripods and they cost between $100-$150. There are tripods for as little as $30 and for as much as you want to pay. In any field of expertise the best gear is going to sell for a premium. Think about whether or not you actually need the best of the best or if something that is just plain good will suit your needs. Read some reviews before you spend your money.

One of the most important things in photography is to make sure that your images are properly exposed. This goes for all types of photography, not just product photography. In order to achieve good exposure in your photographs, you’re going to need to think about several things.

The old method of getting proper exposure involved using a light meter. A light meter would read the light levels in the room, or place that you are in, and then tell you what aperture and shutter speed you should be using in order to get a well exposed photo. Well a light meter is still useful, but not quite as important as it used to be. You see back in the day when people were using film cameras it was very important to get your exposure correct on the first or second shot so that you wouldn’t waste much film. Well now we can use as much digital “film” as we want because we have unlimited “film” with our digital hard drives.

So to start you should probably be shooting in Av priority mode, unless you are an advanced user, in which case you’re probably not reading this guide. Using Av priority mode will allow you to set the aperture and the camera will automatically adjust the shutter speed. This gives you a guide to go by and will most likely produce decent looking images. You should then view the image on the back of your camera and see what the histogram tells you. If the lines on the histogram are bumping up against the left side, your image is going to be under-exposed, meaning it’s too dark. If the lines are bumping up against the right side, the opposite is true and your image is over-exposed. A good balance is what we are looking for. If you just can’t get what looks like a good exposure with using Av mode, then you will probably need to use M (Manual) mode and manually set the aperture and shutter speed to achieve correct exposure.

Something I haven’t mentioned yet is focus. This is rather important in product photography and so I feel that I should mention it at least once. You’ll want to make sure that the most important part of your product is in focus. To do this you can use either manual focus or automatic focus. Often times the auto focus is just as accurate and is almost always faster than manually focusing the lens. I’ll give a more in depth look into correct focus at a later date, but for right now just use auto focus and you’ll do great.