Excellent Product Photography

So you’ve decided that you’re going to venture into the world of product photography, great! In the last post I went over five of the basics of product photography, so I’ll go ahead and give you some more information in this post about what it means to have clean camera lenses, and how to avoid getting bad dirty camera lenses.

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.

Product photography is a great skill that isn’t easy to master and so many people struggle with it. Therefore here at Excellent Product Photography we have the goal of giving you plenty of information and advice that will get you well on your way to creating a career out of product photography.

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.