Need Help / Advice! Beginner

[gokusays]

Hi, I am new to TPF. I am looking for some advice on how to take quality / professional-looking pictures for my website.

In particular:

I want clean looking pictures that are typical of those found in product catalogs, i.e. pictures with clean backgrounds.

Does anyone know how to take quality professional looking pictures for websites? What suggestions do you have?

I'm using a digital camera with 3.5 Meg Pixels. Indoor room lighting. And Photoshop to remove backgrounds. But outcome is sloppy and the process is very tedious. Is it supposed to be like this???

Thanks!

 

[MarcusM]

Is this the sort of thing you're looking for? (my better attempts are near the bottom)

http://thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=114697

If so this can be done very cheaply as long as you have a tripod and some lights to use (they can be some shop lights from a hardware store). I shot these with a homemade light box I built based on this site:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html

 

[Sw1tchFX]

You can also do two plane lighting like this in your living room (this was shot in a dining room):

You need more then just one light for it though.

 

[Alfred D.]

Hi, I am new to TPF. I am looking for some advice on how to take quality / professional-looking pictures for my website.

In particular:

I want clean looking pictures that are typical of those found in product catalogs, i.e. pictures with clean backgrounds.

Does anyone know how to take quality professional looking pictures for websites? What suggestions do you have?

(Bold face and italicizing mine)

If you want professional looking photos you will need to either spend a lot of bucks, time, effort, and elbow grease on this project, or you will need to commission a real professional...
As usual, it's a trade-off.

I'm using a digital camera with 3.5 Meg Pixels.

Get an up-to-date camera.

Indoor room lighting.

Get more light.
If you're using a light tent, 2 equally powerful desk lamps is already enough.

And Photoshop to remove backgrounds. But outcome is sloppy and the process is very tedious. Is it supposed to be like this???

No. Get the exposure right in the first place and you will 1) have a lot less to do in PP, and 2) you will get much better images.

Have fun!

 

[tirediron]

Go to your local library and get some books on product photoraphy, lighting, and exposure. The scope of the question you have asked is much to great to be fully (or even partly answered here).

 

[Montana]

I think you need to read up on lighting and/or flash (and multiple flash units). If you are making small photos for internet use, your 3.5 MP camera will work fine in my opinion.

And if you are taking photos of small items, a light box works great. You can buy them cheap to expensive or like another poster said...make one. I made one myself for photographing marbles and it works fine.

Derrick

 

[John David]

One thing that I think will help is to pick up a Chroma Key background. F.J. Westcott sells a nice simple setup that will help you to drop the background out of the image.

I agree a proper exposure is important but I have seen great images from a 3 MP camera, specifically if you are only going to 72 DPI for the Web.