Advice Needed on Product Photograph

[Ilan]

Hi! I would like some advice please on how to make my product photography look better. Here is what I have right now:



Below is the photo before I changed the RAW settings on Photoshop. This one is straight from the camera, cropped. The label is white IRL.

View attachment 83532

I'm using two lights at the front left and front right (ALZO 85W CFL daylight bulbs, 5500K, 91 CRI) with white/black umbrellas. I also have a silver reflector on the right of the jar.
The photo was shot with a 18.0-55.0 mm f/3.5-5.6 Nikon lens with a 55mm zoom. 1/20 sec; f/7.1; ISO 200. Spot metering. Used a very stable tripod with a 2 second delay. Focused on the X or A of xanthan... don't remember. I used the bottom focus point.

The photo isn't as sharp as I'd like it to be and the colours don't look great. I used manual white balance.

How can I improve?

Thank you!

UPDATE: I removed the reflector from the right side and I added a flash angled at 60 degrees (so a lot hitting the white ceiling). Newest photo below. Still not great, but the background is whiter..



UPDATE 2: Same photo as above, with processing, looks decent..

 

[Ilan]

Any ideas?

 

[tirediron]

The lighting bible.

 

[TheNevadanStig]

Biggest thing standing out to me is how crooked it is. It's leaning down to the right. I don't really do product photography, so take the rest of this with a grain of salt, but the highlights seem blown out in the edits, the product is blending in with the background, and you seem to have too much open space on the bottom.

 

[Ilan]

Yeah.. I see it's crooked too. Weird. I wonder why...

Regarding the space around it I plan to crop it tighter.

I agree it's blending in with the background but I'm not sure what to do about that. Photographing it on black looks strange too. Maybe I can do something with the highlights though.

 

[TheNevadanStig]

I tried playing with it a bit in photoshop myself and I think the label might be slightly crooked. Or it just might be a bit of distortion. But if you use the label to get everything plumb, the jar looks like it's leaning left. If you use the jar to plumb, it looks like it's leaning right lol. There is a happy medium in there though.

 

[Ilan]

Lovely. Looking forward to finding it LOL

 

[productphotographer]

The quick and easy thing I would do is to open the image in Photoshop and manipulate the crooked label to make it alright. It'll probably take 1-2 minutes.

 

[Derrel]

The best shot is the very first one. Each successive variant looks worse and worse.

 

[Ilan]

The best shot is the very first one. Each successive variant looks worse and worse.

So for that one I didn't even have separate lighting for the background. You sure it's the best one? It still doesn't look great anyway.

 

[minicoop1985]

What about a colored background? Maybe a black one? Just a thought.

 

[tecboy]

I'm thinking adding more contrast.

 

[Ilan]

Unfortunately the black background look won't fit my website design. I'm still playing around with lighting.. will post an update a bit later.

I'll try your suggestion tecboy, thanks!

 

[tecboy]

Hope this helps. Paint container photography. It just need more darker shade on the side of the jar.

 

[bianni]

How about lightening the background a bit and square the product.