Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Product Photography





Sorry for the late post today. I spent the morning down at Ron Wood Photography talking with Vinnie about some wedding shooting. Seems as though I'm going to be giving them a hand when they need it. Made a quick stop at Provident Camera, then it was off to do some product shots with Shad. What you see above is some quick setup shots. These shots were for People Working Cooperatively's Oscar night, which is an auction where the proceeds go to a great cause. Check them out, they're a great organization.

The key to product shots is setup. The correct color background, proper lighting, and the right lens makes the shot. For lots of products, the idea is to get in tight and focus close. Macro lenses work really well for this. We were shooting with a Tokina 100mm Macro but we were shooting with a D700 full frame. For you guys shooting a cropped sensor, the Nikon 60mm is a great choice. These lenses will allow you to get nice tight correctly focused shots very easily.

When it comes to lighting, I almost always prefer studio strobes or Nikon speed lights. Flash really just gives you so much more versatility than continuous lighting. Product photography would be the exception. We setup a continuous 3 light kit that had color balanced bulbs that come in at 5500 Kelvin. This allows us to quickly move from shot to shot and still get a nice clean look. It is important to note here that we set a custom white balance and spot checked for accuracy.

The last part to the equation of product photography is the product presentation. As you can see in the image above we took time to make sure that every piece of the "gift basket" of dog toys was displayed in a manner that the viewer would be able to see them. Placing the largest items in back, and standing items on end to allow for viewing is very critical when taking this type of shot. Get these three things right, and the shoot will come together nicely. Jason

1 comment:

  1. One thing that takes too much time is the arrangement of the product before clicking. Totally agree with your post. I think tthats the tiring bit.

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