Product photography

[Peeb]

Have been asked to take some shots for a friend to use to sell products on the internet. The requested style is pretty much straight-down POV of the product in a whitebox, so that a page of items would all have the same (stark) feel.

3 questions:

1) any special product for orienting your camera in such a fashion beyond these types of gadgets? Tripod Arms | B&H Photo Video

2) lighting tips or tricks? I have 2 off-camera lights and an on-camera with a diffuser. EDIT- this appears to be good stuff: Product Photography Lighting and Best Practices - BorrowLenses Blog

3) In order to get the white background to be EXACTLY the same for a full page of choices- is this simply a matter of white balance be set exactly the same? I am predicting this to be a tricky issue.

Thanks in advance

 

[Braineack]

I bought the Vangauard alto pro2 specifically to boom out for these types of shoots

You wanna see hacky?



I bought a $1 plastic table cloth just for a backdrop and to clean up reflections.
I used spare pieces of white wooden shelving, foamcore, and my reflector to act as bounce cards and to again control reflections.
I used two lights in bounce umbrellas, one setup almost directly above the image point straight down, the other to the side at a high angle as well to cast a shadow off to the side.
I set the products on white paper where possible to give me a clean surface to shoot against. (i was shooting large car parts and ran out of clean sheets of paper and it had to go directly on the tablecloth which made it 10x harder to edit)

end result:

Not the greatest, not the worst, better than what he had .


as far as the background, i made sure they went back to white in post, but they were pretty close SOOC:

 

[Peeb]

I bought the Vangauard alto pro2 specifically to boom out for these types of shoots

You wanna see hacky?

View attachment 146202

I bought a $1 plastic table cloth just for a backdrop and to clean up reflections.
I used spare pieces of white wooden shelving, foamcore, and my reflector to act as bounce cards and to again control reflections.
I used two lights in bounce umbrellas, one setup almost directly above the image point straight down, the other to the side at a high angle as well to cast a shadow off to the side.
I set the products on white paper where possible to give me a clean surface to shoot against. (i was shooting large car parts and ran out of clean sheets of paper and it had to go directly on the tablecloth which made it 10x harder to edit)

end result:
...

Not the greatest, not the worst, better than what he had .

Very nice!!

 

[jamescooper18]

I have just come across to a post where they are saying a budget-conscious person should use Speedlights. But the problem with Speedlights are a lack of modeling light, which will be very annoying, and a lack of power. But according to that post "Power you can get around by raising your ISO but that would require a camera which can handle higher ISO’s very well. Quality is of the utmost importance with product photography and hence, if raising your ISO becomes necessary, your camera MUST be good. The benefits of Speedlights are price and having a very fast flash duration which is capable of freezing fast moving subjects. I would suggest Yongnuo’s for those that are seeking the ultimate in budget-friendly items.

 

[FotosbyMike]

1. That will work, I would recommend so sandbags or counter weight to make sure something doesn't fall over.
2. Good advice
3. With only a few strobes it maybe hard to get pure white, get as close as you can then use the pen tool in Photoshop to isolate the product and then create pure white background (255, RGB)