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First would just like to say hi since i am new!

I am in the need of a lighting solution for product photography. I wish to shoot smallish items like electronics, gadgets, lcd monitors and pc hardware, with a plain white background, sometimes full frame macro. I have looked through the Ken Rockwell site many times and noticed he has awesome product photography. He wrote an article on product photography and suggested a 3-strobe umbrella setup between 250-500w, which is the same setup he uses for his product shots.

Now ive been looking around and the price range starts at around $400-500 for the cheaper chinese stuff, and $1000+ for brand name gear, eg Elinchrom Dlite.

Can anybody suggest a solution? What exactly do i need. Im after something reliable and that will last... Are strobe lights necessary or will normal flood lights do? My main requirement is super clean product shots with a completely white background.

Before you spend lots of money on lighting, have you tried a light tent?

Want to try one for nothing?
Grab yourself a stool, or chair, and flip it upside down, grab a piece of curved white card and place this within the stool and then cover it all with a white sheet. To light your new light tent you can use (if you have them) a couple of flashes, (if you dont) a few table lamps.

That is what I have done (minus the white card) in the past, a little post process will fix whites if you need

I did consider i light tent, but for some of the shots and angles im after it is not practical... in the past i have used a few desk lamps over a large piece of white cardboard. seemed to work well, but not for the bigger items, just didn't have enough light and a big enough area to work with. I suppose my working area would be about 2 square meters, so i wouldn't need the most powerful lighting either.

RHiSC wrote:I did consider i light tent, but for some of the shots and angles im after it is not practical...

Please explain this further. Light tents come in a variety of sizes, and of course you can move your subject within the light tent in order to obtain a different angle of view of that subject. Even a large-sh light tent should come in at less than a hundred Pacific Pesos from flEaBay. Most come with seamless background fabric that can be used to help with what you're describing for the background, but more n that in a moment.

If you really need something large, consider a small (narrow) roll of white background paper along with a couple of stands to support it.

What are some of the objects that you expect to be shooting?

When you say that your working area will be about 2 square meters, could you please explain what you mean? Is this the size of the objects you will be shooting, or is this the size of the workarea available, or ... ???

A small three light strobe setup is, as a general guide, excellent for this sort of work. One strobe to each side of your object, positioned between the camera and the subject, so as to provide both frontal and side illumination. Set the exposure for these to the correct exposure for what you're shooting. Consider that you may wish to have a bit of differential in the power settings so as to provide a little shaping of the light on your subject.

Remember too that the lighting should be nice and diffuse. If you're using a light tent, then this will happen as a matter of course, but if not, a soft box (bigger is better) will do nicely.

To get your white background ... that's where light #3 comes in. Point it at your background, and have it placed to the rear of your subject. Perhaps at the top of the light tent, pointing backwards, or perhaps behind the light tent, facing forwards. If you're using background paper, directly above and behind your subject, facing backwards, or if size permits, directly behind the subject, facing backwards will work as well.

Set the power of this light to two or three stops more than the other lights. The goal is that you want to totally blow the background, but without affecting the subject.

There are small inexpensive kits available that you can purchase; we have a couple for suitably qualified members (read the FAQ) or you can buy through flEaBay. Most come with modifiers of some sort - some with just brollies others include softboxes and the like.

Or, as Cameron suggested, you can fabricate your own (also consider pvc tubing as a frame, and draping white translucent fabric over it) and for inexpensive lighting, consider the worklamps you can buy from your hardware store for about $25. Just adjust your wb to suit, but bear in mind that, with summer approaching, these will become uncomfortable after quite a short period of time, and they might present a fire hazard if you're not careful with their placement.

Having been a product photographer for a few years (electronics for Jaycar, Arista, NDS et al) a light tent is a must. Lighting is another matter. I have used and do use Bowens Trilites, studio flash heads, Nikon SB800 and SB900 plus the R1C1 kit and what I call God’s light (that which surrounds us).

For very small items such as switches, diodes, resistors, etc., I very often use daylight plus a small amount of flash from the SB800/900/R1C1. I also use these flashes to produce backlight and light from below. For larger items such as matrix switches, modems etc I would use the Trilites.

A note here on lenses. For very small items I normally use a dedicated macro lens (Sigma 105mm). For larger items I would use anything from a 300mm down to a 50mm depending on the subject.

The following is an example using a macro.



This is a raw pic prior to being touched up for print.

Thanks for the informative reply guys... the example in the photo is exactly the sort of macro work ill be doing.

The 2 square meters i was talking about is about the size of the flat work area. Some products would fit in my hand, and some would take up most of the work area, eg the box packaging of a printer or a flatbed scanner.

Ok so i guess a light tent would be suitable for the smaller items. I may try a light tent and some flood lights from Bunnings, the ones that dont get too hot and beam out a cool white light. Would these be ideal, for the small stuff in the light tent as well as the bigger stuff on a white background?

As you guys have said, diffused lighting is the best for this sort of thing... how can i diffuse the lighting from flood lights when not using the light tent?

RHiSC wrote:The 2 square meters i was talking about is about the size of the flat work area. Some products would fit in my hand, and some would take up most of the work area, eg the box packaging of a printer or a flatbed scanner.

You will need a fair bit of space around the workarea for your lights. To properly illuminate even a small scanner, I'd suggest that you want your lights, on either side, to be at least a meter away.

For the packaging, even more clearance will be needed: you need to have your lights placed as close as possible to increase the relative size of the light source (to the subject matter) but they need to be located far enough away so that they will evenly illuminate the whole of the object.

And of course they also need to be far enough away from the subject so that you can photograph the whole of the subject, but not include your light sources within the image.

And for a subject as large as this, you also need to allow for the reach of your glass, and your camera to subject distance. I would probably even consider a PC lens of some sort, as depth of field may become a critical issue with the larger objects: will it be an acceptable outcome for you to produce images that are only sharp at certain points?

Ok so i guess a light tent would be suitable for the smaller items. I may try a light tent and some flood lights from Bunnings, the ones that dont get too hot and beam out a cool white light. Would these be ideal,

Is there such a thing? The lights I'm familiar with have QI globes, and get very hot.

If you're thinking of ones that use flouro tubes, fergedaboudit. Like our NSW state politicians, they are nowhere near bright enough. And colour balance, with any forum of flouro light, is problematic.

As you guys have said, diffused lighting is the best for this sort of thing... how can i diffuse the lighting from flood lights when not using the light tent?

A white sheet supported from some light stands or a frame?

[quote="gstark"Light tents come in a variety of sizes, and of course you can move your subject within the light tent in order to obtain a different angle of view of that subject.[/quote]

I regularly need to light trikes that are about 3m long, 1m wide and 1m high... any suggestions?

Stuff like this: http://trisled.com.au/avatarvelo.html

The main problem I think I have is space - I don't actually have a big enough indoor space to let me get more than about 2m away from the trike without spending a week clearing out the factory. So a lot of the photos end up being taken outside. I'd really like something like a "light marquee" that I could set up fairly easily in the carpark and use for shooting stuff like those vehicles. Holden have indictaed that they're not keen to let us use their photo halls even though we can get occasional access to their test track, but for a while that looked like a good solution.

These were taken in the small showroom area with a paper backdrop, but it shut down the showroom for the day: http://trisled.com.au/workbike.html (and there's a bit of photoshop involved cleaning up the backdrop).

For lighting, I used the track lights in the showroom but bounced them off the ceiling. Plus added a couple of 500W halogen spots that were lying around. But despite the skepticism of more knowlegable people than myself I'm also very tempted by compact fluoro spotlights just because they don't bake the work area and they're cheaper than studio flashes (plus they are generally useful, unlike studio flashes).

moz wrote:

gstark wrote:Light tents come in a variety of sizes, and of course you can move your subject within the light tent in order to obtain a different angle of view of that subject.

I regularly need to light trikes that are about 3m long, 1m wide and 1m high... any suggestions?

Have you considered renting a studio space for a half day or so?

At 3m long, we're talking big lights to do the job properly, and of course (and as you've noted) you need good clearance around your subjects, plus, with larger subjects and greater distances, backgrounds can and do become more difficult to maintain control over. A proper studio permits all of these issues to be within your sphere of influence.

Earlier in the year we rented a studio facility for a portraiture session, and the cost for the day was around PP400 or so. The studio had good lights available for our use, along with some very good, and very big, reflectors.

Given that what you're doing is a commercial venture, I would seriously consider using such a facility.

Also, you have, with these trikes, one other issue that we've not yet canvassed: they have highly reflective surfaces, and that may also be a cause of concern in your images. You may have a need for some subtractors as well as reflectors and softboxes.

I think I would be wanting to use a very large softy, positioned overhead and forward of the subject. I would like the softy to be about the same length as the subject.

As an alternative, as long as you have the space around the subject, perhaps consider darkening the room and then making a long-time exposure and using light painting for your illumination, aiming to get the subject well lit within a darker environment that you can the photochop out of the image.

The main problem I think I have is space -

I will politely restrain myself at this point.

I don't actually have a big enough indoor space to let me get more than about 2m away from the trike without spending a week clearing out the factory. So a lot of the photos end up being taken outside. I'd really like something like a "light marquee" that I could set up fairly easily in the carpark and use for shooting stuff like those vehicles.

Ok ... we have a couple of ideas to explore here.

Typically, a large roll of background paper is what ... four meters long? I don't think that's long enough to give you a decent background plus clear area that you'd need for side-on shots of the trike. Frontals, and the work bike, perhaps. A pair of stands, a cross-beam, one roll of paper, and you may not need to do quite as much clearing out.

What about one of those canvass pergolas that you buy for not-too-many-pesos? The immediate problem I see with that is that their legs may become intrusive. But get one that's basic white, throw some background paper and a couple of white sheets into the mix, and you have a rather large outdoors-capable light tent. Use it on a sunny day and you're set.

These were taken in the small showroom area with a paper backdrop, but it shut down the showroom for the day

At what cost, including teardown and setup of the showroom, plus bumping in and out the photography gear? And the loss of the facility for the day.

What's the comparative cost against that of hiring a studio for a half-day or so? Remember that in a good sized facility you may have several discreet areas available to use, and thus you could do one sort of shoot here, and something entirely different over there, thus maximising your use of the facility, whereas in a smaller area, you might need to spend more time in teardowns and resetting stuff up.

For lighting, I used the track lights in the showroom but bounced them off the ceiling. Plus added a couple of 500W halogen spots that were lying around.

I'd be curious to find out if the track lighting (150w, 12v?) actually contributed that much to the image. If you're using a couple of 500w halogens, and they're somewhat closer than the bounced tracklights, the likelihood that they were adding light is probably not all that great.

A few 500w halogens would provide some element of good controlable light, and they could easily be bounced or diffused in some way.

But despite the skepticism of more knowlegable people than myself I'm also very tempted by compact fluoro spotlights just because they don't bake the work area and they're cheaper than studio flashes (plus they are generally useful, unlike studio flashes).

As I said, they're likely to be underpowered, and give you all manner of wb issues. Flouro is notorious in terms of being able to control the colour, and domestic lighting comes totally uncalibrated: you may end up a real dog's breakfast. By all means try it - I'm not going to argue with that - but I wouldn't be expecting the results to be of too high a quality.

gstark wrote:Have you considered renting a studio space for a half day or so? ... $400-ish

Yes, but money really is an issue -this is "favour for a friend" territory, and until there's enough money to pay properly for the photographer a studio is out. The marquee might go just because he can use it for generic stalls and so on as well. So that plus some backdrops might well work.

Also, you have, with these trikes, one other issue that we've not yet canvassed: they have highly reflective surfaces, and that may also be a cause of concern in your images. You may have a need for some subtractors as well as reflectors and softboxes.

I know about the reflections... that blue velomobile is one big shiny object and there are places where you can see a squishy moz-image in it (luckily it's convex so the reflections are small and I call them "highlights" )

Typically, a large roll of background paper is what ... four meters long?

Thanks so someone who likes auctions and garage sales we have a roll of paper about 3m wide and 12m long. Which is good but it smudges very easily and cannot really be cleaned.

At what cost, including teardown and setup of the showroom, plus bumping in and out the photography gear? And the loss of the facility for the day.

The loss of showroom is fairly inevitable since the staff are needed to do the shoot (I am *not* lugging a couple of vanloads of trikes to the studio by myself), and the flip side is that everyone is right there to answer the phone and make suggestions. The occasional customer is light relief. One thing I am working on is getting a shot list from the web designer and a list of objects to shoot from the boss. You'd thing that when there are three people in the company and they're all right there that they might be able to decide what they want... I also need to learn to manage clients.

I'd be curious to find out if the track lighting (150w, 12v?) actually contributed that much to the image. If you're using a couple of 500w halogens, and they're somewhat closer than the bounced tracklights

I found that by bouncing the halogens off whiteboards I could get reasonable control and diffusion, and the tracklights were useful for filling in shadows and the dull spots in the images. I took the liberty of lifting the voltage on the tracklights to give me a colour that almost exactly matched the worklights (more volts = hotter colour temp, more efficient lights and shorter bulb life (the bulbs are also more likely to blow if bumped when they're hotter)).

(compact fluoro spots) ... are likely to be underpowered, and give you all manner of wb issues. Flouro is notorious in terms of being able to control the colour, and domestic lighting comes totally uncalibrated

Yeah, but I'm keen to get away from having 1500W of heating in a small room. So I might try to sell the idea of a marquee, shoot on overcast days to reduce and diffuse the natural light, and see what I can get in the way of close-to-natural fill lights. I will see about doing some studio work before I try to rent one myself I think.

Thanks for the suggestions and thoughts.

Ok so back to my post...

The 2 sq meters im talking about is the flat work area, contained in a medium sized room. Nothing im going to shoot will have a footprint larger than 2 sq meters. I have plenty of room around this area to move lights and put white backdrops, etc.

So i guess the floodlights could be a bit problematic, plus the heat issue. What 3-strobe setup would be idea? How about this kit: http://www.dragonimage.com.au/product.asp?id=1472
What would that be like compared to the cheaper kits sold via this site, like the GE ones, or the EBAY kits?