Product Photography

A good friend of mine owns a creative agency here in Encinitas called Vivid Minds.  I ran into him at dinner a few nights ago and he asked me if I would be interested in helping him photograph some of the new water bottle designs he’s working on.  I had to explain to him that I wasn’t exactly an expert in the lighting and photography that is truely an art form when products are photographed really well, but he trusted me with the job anyways and we proceeded to make a plan to build a make shift studio in his office.

I’m posting this blog for a few reasons.  1 is because I didn’t really have anything else interesting to talk about, and the other is because there may be people out there who would like to shoot their own products for ebay or for any other number of reasons and I thought I’d share how I did my own.  Really all you need are 6  strobes, a table, a roll of white photographic paper and a few white foam core pieces to use as bounce cards.  The photograph below explains the set up I was using.  Take a look and I hope it helps.

I know, my diagram is a bit janky…………The basic idea is this, where each arrow points is where I placed each light.  Lights number 3, and 4 were pulled away from the set in this picture so you can’t see them, but they should be placed right up to the edges of your product.

So if we start at 1). I have a Calumet Travel Light 750 watt head on a large sized softbox for a general fill light.  2) I’ve placed a Pro Photo 2400 watt head over the top of my scene with a beauty dish on it to highlight my products from above.  3) This is also a Calumet Travel Light 750w head with a small strip box to create nice even highlights down the left side of the product.  4) Same as 3, for the right side.  5) 750w Travel Light head bare bulb to blast the white background in order to separate the product from the background and create an infinity white feeling.  (be careful not to over blast the background or you’ll begin getting light spilling into your scene and effecting your other lights.  6) same as 5.

Start playing with your settings and light intensity to get a nice even tone throughout your scene.  I found that I couldn’t dial my lights low enough to get a nice even exposure, so instead I used a Neutral Density filter over my lens to get 1 stop less of light.  Then start firing away and try doing different variations with your products for fun.

This is another shot of the same style set up.

And here are some of the results: