Small tiny product pictures

[orthorich]

The company that I work for deals with tiny products we are going to be making a catalog for all our products and I need to find a good way to get close up shots of the products. We are open to buy a new camera as well. Current issue I am having is that everything is very blurry when I try to take a picture that close. The size of the products are no bigger then the point of a pencil or the tip of a pen.


Current set up:

We have a lightbox
Camera: Kodak easy share p880
lens: opteka 55mm


any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ankit]

Macro lens

 

[Dao]

I do not know how tiny your products are.

Here is a shot from a Canon G11 camera in macro mode. Is that good enough as far as tiny products goes.
Photo just taken with hotshoe flash bounced off the ceiling (with little forwarding light).

 

[WesternGuy]

New DSLR, e.g. Canon T3i or equivalent and a macro lens. You will definitely need a macro lens for closeups. The reason everything is blurry when you take a picture that close is that it is out of focus with your current equipment - your lens will not focus as close as you want it to. If everything is as small as you say it is - The size of the products are no bigger then the point of a pencil or the tip of a pen. - then you may need a specialized macro lens like the Canon MP-E 65mm - to get an image that you can reproduce effectively. I would want to try out that lens and the 100mm Macro f2.8 as well. Not sure I can offer you any more suggestions. HTH.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

 

[Dao]

The size of the products are no bigger then the point of a pencil or the tip of a pen.

Sorry, for some reasons I miss this part.

You really need a macro setup. Just an entry level DSLR with a macro lens. The light box is fine as long as your camera is on a tripod so that you do not need to worry about shooting with longer shutter speed when light is not bright enough.

 

[KmH]

The size of the products are no bigger then the point of a pencil or the tip of a pen.

You are going to need a fairly specialized Macro lens then, one that can produce a 5:1 image, like Canon's $1000, manual focus only - Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5X Macro Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

And an appropriate DSLR camera body. An entry level Canon camera body that can spot meter should be sufficient. Like a $500 - Canon EOS Rebel T2i 18 MP CMOS APS-C Digital SLR Camera with 3.0-Inch LCD (Body Only)

Another issue is going to be lighting, so if you're not familiar with lighting for product photography I highly recommend the product photography fundamentals lighting bible - Light Science and Magic, Fourth Edition: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting

If you have some technical training it shouldn't take you more than 6 to 12 months to learn how to consistantly produce professional grade photos of those specific products. It takes a professional product photographer 2 to 3 years to learn how to shoot a wide range of product types.