E-Commerce Photography Problems! :(

Fruitbat · Aug 22, 2011

Hello Everyone!

I'm hoping someone can tell me where I'm going wrong here. Basically up until 2 weeks ago I had never taken a "serious" picture in my life, just the odd picture on holiday etc. So two weeks ago I said I would attempt to do the E-Commerce photography for a friends company to save them lots of money, The product is spectacles. I genuinely thought it would be easy with a little photoshop on the side, apparently not!

So through reading 100's of tutorials and taking tips from each I have come up with a "Light Box" or "Picture Box" that does seem to reduce the harshness of the shadow somewhat, although it's still there. I purchased the main fabric surrounding and then added bits, like the glass to sit it on etc. Let me show you a picture of the setup;

"Light Box";

Okay so my problem was the shadow was so harsh when the product was sat on the cardboard/thick paper I had huge issues editing it in any reasonable time, It would probably be a good time to add that initially there is around 2,500 products to take pictures off and edit, 2-3 angles per product so I really need to minimise editing time by learning how to use my camera I assume

?

The glass does seem to seperate it slightly but the background is far from pure white and during editing it can become a slight pain, Below I'll link several before/after images to give you an idea of my progress so far, it currently takes me approx 10-15mins per picture from loading it to the pc to editing it and saving it at the correct size.

Spectacles Before;

Spectacles After Editing/Resizing;

Case Before;

Case After Edit;

The above pictures was taken with the following camera settings (through trial and error but I'm not experienced enough to say they are the best settings of course): Macro Mode, ISO 100, Exposure +1, White Balance (Custom: It appears to take a picture and define whats best for this).

Finally I would just like to say thankyou in advance I would appreciate ANY advice on this at all, negative or positive feedback also. The main problem is editing time, how can I reduce the time it takes to edit by improving the photography, reducing shadows etc. I have literally spent so much time trawling through the web looking for "The best way" and finally I have decided to voice my question oppose to looking for someone with the same problem!

Best Regards,

~Fruitbat.

The_Traveler · Aug 22, 2011

Have you tried this with a light directed at the paper underneath the glass?
And moving the object further forward so that the edge of the glass doesn't show?

And give yourself a little more room so that you don't have to learn new lighting tricks for slightly larger objects.

KmH · Aug 22, 2011

Your light sources are to small an apparent size. Notice that the hot spot on the light tent wall is not much bigger than the light itself. The bigger the apparent size of the light source (the light tent walls) the softer the shadows. The light will have to be modified (made apparently larger) to project a larger spot on the light tent wall. Photographic umbrellas will do it and are inexpensive. You would want the shoot-through type of umbrellas.

Your light tent is to small by at least half. A bigger light box will require an even larger apparent light source. You will have to DIY make, or buy more stuff.

You now know why professional products photographers get paid what they get paid. A top product photographer will have about $30,000 worth of studio lighting gear, and another $30,000 or so in camera gear and lenses.

gsgary · Aug 22, 2011

your lighting is no where near powerful enough, i wouldn't even use a light tent. How about renting some proper flash but looking at your camera i don't think it will be able to trigger it, you could rent some Arri continuos lights these should be able to rent you some good quality lighting
Calumet Photographic
http://www.calumetphoto.co.uk/eng/services/rental.cfm

Fruitbat · Aug 22, 2011

The_Traveler said:
Have you tried this with a light directed at the paper underneath the glass?
And moving the object further forward so that the edge of the glass doesn't show?

And give yourself a little more room so that you don't have to learn new lighting tricks for slightly larger objects.

Thankyou for your response, I have tried that yes however I'm not entirely sure that I was doing it correctly, I attempted it with the smaller lights that are in the picture shown on the original post, and basically lay it down to project the light across the paper however it just seemed to add alot of light to the frames and as most are made of a polished material it gave a "blown out" effect on certain parts of the frame (I'm hoping that is the correct phrase!).

The majority of my images was taken with the object slightly closer to avoid the "glass line" I'm not sure why I didn't do it with that one if I'm honest.

KmH: Your light sources are to small an apparent size. Notice that the hot spot on the light tent wall is not much bigger than the light itself. The bigger the apparent size of the light source (the light tent walls) the softer the shadows. The light will have to be modified (made apparently larger) to project a larger spot on the light tent wall. Photographic umbrellas will do it and are inexpensive. You would want the shoot-through type of umbrellas.

Your light tent is to small by at least half. A bigger light box will require an even larger apparent light source. You will have to DIY make, or buy more stuff.

You now know why professional products photographers get paid what they get paid. A top product photographer will have about $30,000 worth of studio lighting gear, and another $30,000 or so in camera gear and lenses.

I see that now that you have mentioned it, I'll have to look into getting some more lighting in that case. As this is all one large learning curve for me why would I require a larger light tent for such a small object? My guess would be something to do with the way light travels (If I was using more powerful light sources)?

Yeah I can see that but unfortunately I don't have alot to throw at this project currently. So I'm just after the best results possible without spending the sort of money that requires you to actual be in the profession

Thankyou for your tips.

gsgary: your lighting is no where near powerful enough, i wouldn't even use a light tent. How about renting some proper flash but looking at your camera i don't think it will be able to trigger it, you could rent some Arri continuos lights these should be able to rent you some good quality lighting

Hmm so the problem definetely seems to be within the lighting. I'm sure I can get hold of some lighting equipment. Just out of interest, am I correct to say that the purpose of a light tent is to diffuse the light so that it creates a softer shadow, and that if I discarded the light tent and just used a seamless white background and lights reflecting off something else like an umbrella the effect would be the same? The camera is pretty basic so I think your suggestion of renting the continuous lighting would be a very valid option, with this being said if I was to rent this type of lighting and disregard the light tent, how many would I need to get a pure white background which would effectively reduce the edit time by 3/4?

Thankyou to all your responses and I look forward to hearing some more ideas.

Best Regards,

Fruitbat.

christian.rudman · Aug 22, 2011

I handle the eBay sales for our company, and I can tell you that while technically from a photographer's stand point your images are not well lit enough, there's too much of blah blah blah... it really does not matter. Customers on eBay are looking for a proper display of your product and any indication of issues with the item. You have a helluva lot of items to photograph and get up on the web, don't nitpick on what you are putting up or you will be well into next year before you finish.

Your images before edit are perfectly suitable for internet sales, and could be improved only through the removal of fabric between your lights and the item. Personally I like the reflection on the glass, it provides a nice depth to the image, and is a huge photoshop trend right now to create those reflections through post production. If you want to check out what I am talking about with our items look at this auction from us. As you will note, it is poorly managed in post production terms, but that is partly because the company will not allow me to have pp tools. All of my images are straight out of the camera. People still buy the stuff regardless. That is lit with 3 softboxes, two in front, one in rear behind the seamless table I shoot on, and one halogen underneath for that warming base effect. Your images are good, don't spend so much time making them technically perfect.

Just my two cents,

Cheers.

gsgary · Aug 22, 2011

This shot is staight from camera, so it would quite easy to shoot what you want and use them straight out of camera with some good lighting

Fruitbat · Aug 22, 2011

christian.rudman: I handle the eBay sales for our company, and I can tell you that while technically from a photographer's stand point your images are not well lit enough, there's too much of blah blah blah... it really does not matter. Customers on eBay are looking for a proper display of your product and any indication of issues with the item. You have a helluva lot of items to photograph and get up on the web, don't nitpick on what you are putting up or you will be well into next year before you finish.

Your images before edit are perfectly suitable for internet sales, and could be improved only through the removal of fabric between your lights and the item. Personally I like the reflection on the glass, it provides a nice depth to the image, and is a huge photoshop trend right now to create those reflections through post production. If you want to check out what I am talking about with our items look at this auction from us. As you will note, it is poorly managed in post production terms, but that is partly because the company will not allow me to have pp tools. All of my images are straight out of the camera. People still buy the stuff regardless. That is lit with 3 softboxes, two in front, one in rear behind the seamless table I shoot on, and one halogen underneath for that warming base effect. Your images are good, don't spend so much time making them technically perfect.

Just my two cents,

Cheers.

Thankyou for taking the time to reply, the main problem with the picture before editing is I can't get anywhere close to a pure white background and this is definetely required. I mean if I can't do it so to speak it will have to be out sourced but my main reason for taking on the challenge is my passion for learning, and I must say I have really enjoyed learning what I have already, even knowing there is so much more to learn. I really like the effect you have achieved with your image but unfortunately I have to have a pure white background which is a huge pain. As for the glass, I actually added that to the light tent to help seperate the shadow, or at least "dull it down" so that the editing would be easier, which has worked but not to the effect I was hoping. For some reason I thought it would almost project the shadow onto the paper a few inches below, evidentally not

! There is so much to think about but I'm 90% sure that if I spend a week more getting the setup correct I'll most likely save alot more than a week when it comes to editing the huge amount of images I will have to edit haha.

gsgary: This shot is staight from camera, so it would quite easy to shoot what you want and use them straight out of camera with some good lighting

That is an excellent shot indeed, so be it with my untrained eye. I'm assuming that the reflection wouldn't be there if you was to use say.. Seamless paper oppose to a reflective surface? Also would the fact that my backgrounds have to be white add to the complexity of lighting required? I often find upon editing if I invert the image's colours black hides alot more unwanted distractions.

Furthermore, Is it possible to actually create the sort of setup I'll need on a low budget? The images don't have to be the best quality as they are resized so much that the detail is lost for the most part. The important thing is the pure white background.. I know its abit of a reverse thing to say on a photography website but I'm sure you understand what I mean.

Thankyou once more,

Fruitbat

gsgary · Aug 22, 2011

To make the background white you need to light it evenly with at least 1 stop of light more than your subject and i would have the subject about 3 foot from the background

Fruitbat · Aug 22, 2011

gsgary said:
To make the background white you need to light it evenly with at least 1 stop of light more than your subject and i would have the subject about 3 foot from the background

Thankyou for your response, I'd just like to point out I am a complete novice at this although I am learning there is a long road ahead. Granted perhaps I've thrown myself into the deep end

Also I'm not asking anyone to do something for me, I want to know why I should do something, so I can put it into practise and learn from it.

Okay so is 1 stop of light +1 exposure? as that is what I have been using but would there be a way of knowing what the "exposure" of the subject is without a light meter? I imagine it comes with experience but surely there are basic rules to follow?

So to sum up your suggestions, I would... Stop using the light tent, I would get a seamless background (now for this I have done some research and I believe I would require some translucent perplex? If that was correct, that would be ~3 foot away from a sheet of seamless white paper, and to add to that I would require several high powered lights diffused by lighting umbrellas? From there on I would find out the exposure of the subject and adjust the camera to be 1 above the subjects exposure?

Please read the above as intended, I'm more than willing to learn and in fact that is what I want to do I'm just trying to summarize the advice given to me

I would appreciate it if you could tell me if I have interpreted this correctly.

Thankyou once more,

Fruitbat.

gsgary · Aug 22, 2011

Say the settings for your subject read 1/125@ F8 your background want to read 1/125@F16, i'm not great at explaining in writing but i only use flash so i only alter the aperture so each of these settings is 1 stop higher than the one before F2 F2.8 F4 F8 F16 F32 and in between you get 1/2 stops, each full stop of light is double of the one before, but using continous lighting you can get 1 stop by shutter speed 1/125@ f8 your background would read 1/250@F8 each shutter speed is 1 stop higher than the one before 1/15 1/30 1/60 1/125 1/250 1/500 1/1000 i hope this helps

Fruitbat · Aug 23, 2011

gsgary said:
Say the settings for your subject read 1/125@ F8 your background want to read 1/125@F16, i'm not great at explaining in writing but i only use flash so i only alter the aperture so each of these settings is 1 stop higher than the one before F2 F2.8 F4 F8 F16 F32 and in between you get 1/2 stops, each full stop of light is double of the one before, but using continous lighting you can get 1 stop by shutter speed 1/125@ f8 your background would read 1/250@F8 each shutter speed is 1 stop higher than the one before 1/15 1/30 1/60 1/125 1/250 1/500 1/1000 i hope this helps

Thankyou Gary I have read a few articles on this, and am "starting" to understand it better.

To give anyone willing to continue helping me learn a better idea of my setup, or equipment. I'm using this camera at the moment: Canon U.S.A. : Support & Drivers : PowerShot A470 and from the reviews I have read I believe it controls the F-Stops itself, I can control exposure compensation, ISO, White balance and 'Long shutter speed'. So I went and spent a few hours playing around with settings and learned a few tricks.

I'm still trying to figure out how exactly the three different light metering modes work, I know what they do but wouldn't know what situation to use each one. I think at a guess one is the full view, one is the focus and one is a spot?

I'm already looking at DSLR's I think I'm hooked on learning here. Perhaps I should learn the basics before such an investment though

Fruitbat.

and f