So I know there are a few photographers on DJTT. I am am being educated as a designer by day, so I often need to take photos of prototypes, models, actual products. Except, I have no idea how to take a decent product photo. Once in awhile one comes out looking pretty good by chance. Most others need a lot of photoshop to fix it up.
Now I’ve seen some pretty damn sexy photos of gear on the show your setup thread, so I was wondering if anyone has any good tips on product photography?
You can get away cheap shop lights with different wattage bulbs for stuff like your talking about. Experiment with different bulbs for different colors. You can get some white poster-board and curve it from your shooting surface to the wall behind to get a good seamless background. The biggest secret is in your lighting though.
Its all about the lighting. If you can get great light on your subject you will have a great photo.
Your settings will vary greatly based on the type of lighting. There is not really a specific setting that will work in every situation. Just google “product photography”. There are plenty of videos with good info on how to achieve a great photo.
I think shooting high key always give the product a nice, clean look. When shooting products I’ll normally use a seamless white/black background. 1 light for black and 2 lights for white.
The first one was shot with a regular ol’ 35mm dslr…and the rest were large format. Large format is always recommended for product shots, but it all depends on budget, equipment, etc…
large format camera? do you not mean a medium format camera? large format cameras have been out of fashion since the 70s. they’re only really used for landscape photography and even that is a rarity. the added resolution you would get over a medium format for product photos is NIL. i would never recommend a large over a medium format camera to a novice because none of it makes sense. it would cost a hydrogen bomb and an iceberg to develop the film and for a lens to do the film justice. most of the large format cameras out there are owned by big name companies and just a handful of big-name photographers.
i’d recommend you practice with a 35mm SLR first and move on to medium format, although that’s only if you will get a lot of use out of it. for clean shots, use a 100mm lens (35mm film) or a 60mm lens for more play. there’s no right answer (just like midi controllers )
when starting out, play around with the aperture and depth of field. increase the aperture (lower the f-stop i.e. f4.0 should be fine) to attract detail to select parts of the product and do the opposite for greater detail (while adjusting the shutter speed for light balance). once you’ve mastered that, then begin adjusting areas of incoming light. you could even try using a long exposure and a burst of secondary light focused in a select area for extra fun.
photography is all about experimenting. learn the basics, then experiment
edit:
tbat iphone picture definitely looks like a render to me.
I think we’re getting a little off topic here. Even if you just have a point and shoot camera you can get some good shots with good lighting. I’m still curious to know what your needing to fix in Photoshop. With that info we can tell you what you need to do to correct the image in the camera.
Actually, large format cameras are still used. It’s a Toyo View with a Leaf Aptus digital back (provided by school of course), not using film --hydrogen bomb yes! especially since the back itself is $15,000
And yes, i painted in the screen and headphones for the iPod touch using a vector mask in Photoshop
flip through some magazines or look stuff up online. photography has lots of things in common with music production lol. i find ref tracks and try to mimick some thangs to learn new techniques.
edit;
large format is SOOOOOOOOO 124451 YEARS AGO. you amateurs should stick with dslrs and leave the big toys to people like me
For cameras, I have an Olympus DSLR. The exact specs I am not sure of right now, since I am away from home working an internship for 2 months.
I had to pack light, so what I have with me is an olympus point and shoot. Its a Olympus Mju Tough 6010: Cameras | TechRadar
What I usually have to fix in photoshop when using my DSLR is color balance, levels, hue/saturation, along with some heavy editing with brushes and stuff to make the subject look better.
I’m curious as to if its possible to get DECENT quality product photos out of a point and shoot with little to no manual settings. Of course it won’t be as good as the DSLR, but its what i’ve got with me..
Also, I hate lugging the DSLR around. If I can get decent quality from a point and shoot, I would much rather carry that around and get more shots.
Most photographers do some sort of post processing on their pictures. Even if it’s just in the raw conversion (which is pretty damn powerful already). If you want to minimize this part of the work, make sure to get white balance etc. right already when shooting. You could, if the camera allows, adjust the curves, saturation etc. for the jpg conversion. But shooting RAW, and doing the adjustments and sharpening in the computer will yield better results.
The DSLR offers some advantages of course, the most important ones being: shorter depth of field, lower noise, higher dynamic range and less shutter lag.
If your adjusting levels a bunch that tells me your probably under exposed. Put a lot of light on whatever your shooting, make it really bright. Then put the camera on a low iso, like under 200 if you can. The sensor sizes on the point and shoot cameras are much smaller than those in a DSLR so the higher iso’s don’t really look good.
Put the camera on a tripod and let the camera do the figuring on exposure. As long as the light is even throughout the camera should do pretty good. You can usually set the saturation level in the camera so that would keep you from having to do it in photoshop. Another tip if you shutter speeds are kind of low and your using a tripod is to take the shot with the timer. That way you pushing the button doesn’t shake the camera.
The seamless background can help a lot for making things pop. Just about anything will work, I use poster board with the bottom half tapes to a desk and the top half taped to the wall giving me a nice even curve. That said I only do three or four shots like that a year so some others might have some better advise.
For product photography i would say an even light is the best. The best way to achieve this on a budget is with an external flash (which is more or less best for everything). The trick is to bounce the light of the ceiling by pointing it upwards. So the subject is illuminated smooth and even.
If you’re talking about product photos and anyone mentions anything but lighting or backgrounds as a first step, they probably don’t know what they’re doing.
Lighting is the #1 thing you should be worried about, followed by your background…for which you can use a big roll of white large-format printer paper.
I’m not kidding. I consider myself a halfway decent photographer, and except for really weird lighting conditions when it’s actually faster to shoot manual, I do everything in program shift exposure…film or digital…with or without lighting. It works beautifully. Modern cameras are really good at flash exposure for product photos.
)
