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!

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.

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.

One issue that people have a lot is dust. Dust generally isn’t a problem with the lens, however. Usually if dust appears in your images it is because there is dust on the sensor of your camera. Dust will look like a grayish blotch or smudge in your images. Generally they are small, but you can tell they are there if you look closely. It’s easier to tell if you shoot a photo of something that is completely white. Anyways I just mention this because generally dust is not the fault of the lens, which is the topic of this post.

What is the fault of the lens many times however, are cracks and scrapes. This is one of the most problematic issues with lenses that product photographers face. Before you buy a lens, always look at both ends of the glass. Hold it up to the light to check for any cracks or scrapes. Most lenses won’t have any problems if it was taken care of properly, but you want to be absolutely positive that your tool of choice for product photography is in top shape. To protect lenses that you already have, buy a lens filter. There are varying qualities of lens filters, but a good one usually costs no more than $30.

Another problem in lenses to look for is fungus. This is mainly only a problem with older lenses. If a lens has been stored without proper protection in a basement or some dark cool place for extended periods of time, it may have fungus growing on it. If this is the case, your images will definitely be affected by this. It goes without saying that this is bad and avoid lenses with fungus at all costs. Please just use common sense with this. Carefully inspect the lens before buying to be sure that it has no fungus.

The last thing to think about is the cosmetic appearance of the lens. If it is banged up and has scratches on the barrel, this will not affect image quality, however it might give you an idea about how much the lens has been used. If it has an abundance of scratches, it could mean the previous owner didn’t take care of it very well. Buy with caution.

In the end sometimes it’s just smarter to stick with new lenses because you will have less problems on average. In the business of product photography, the less problems you have the happier you will be.

To start off, we must mention that this field takes a lot of practice and the gear required to produce the desired results can get expensive. If you do not have time to invest into practice, or money to invest in top quality professional gear, this may not be the field for you.

The basics of product photography are:

1) Good clean camera lenses

If you don’t have a clean and clear camera lens you won’t be able to get optimal results no matter how good you are on the rest of the basics. You can clean things up in Photoshop to a certain extent, but there is a time when things just don’t get any better. To avoid making the mistake of unusable images because of a bad lens, just make sure you have a clean lens! When purchasing lenses inspect them for fungus, dust, scratches and any other blemishes that they may have. Newer lenses will generally have less problems, but that isn’t always the case.

2) Good exposure

You need to make sure that you have the correct exposure when you take your photos. You can use the histogram in your camera to check this. If the lines in the histogram are very far to the left, that means your image is too dark. If they are very far to the right, your images are too bright. A dark image is usually referred to as being under-exposed and a bright image is over-exposed. Many cameras can shoot in Av mode which means you set the aperture and the camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed for you.

3) Good sturdy tripod

Without a tripod your images are prone to become blurry. This is something you don’t want. For the very best results you must have crisp and sharp images. This definitely requires a tripod.

4) Good lighting

For good lighting it’s never a good idea to use the on-camera flash. It is usually too harsh and gives the product a kind of yucky look. How’s” yucky” for technical terms? : ) It is a good idea to make sure you have a main light, a fill light and possibly a back light. This is a fairly deep subject and I will go into this in more detail later.

5) Good practice

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. This couldn’t be more true than with product photography. You must be willing to put in the hours of practice that the other pros are putting in. If you don’t, your product photography just won’t measure up and you’ll find yourself without clients. Please do yourself a favor and practice, practice, practice.

I will go into each of these in more detail later, but this should give you a good start.