Product Shots: Answering A Question I was Not Asked.

Preamble:

I make no claims of being any manner of product pic aficionado… because I am not. Far from it. Through a bit of trial and error, I have just stumbled onto a consistent method to document the gear that I obsess over… review in this space. Ok. Enough of that. On to the task at hand.

Have had the occasional kind word said about my gear pics for posts. After a bit of fuss for product pics in the past…

…I have simplified things immensely since.

No more long exposure. No colored light bar. No more light painting. No expensive lighting. No flash or strobes. Now I mostly use a simple set up. Two inexpensive phone sized lights and near any camera you can lay your hands on. Crop sensor or full frame the settings are the same.

Settings:

• Set the lights to 5000K.
  • I am sure other settings would work as well.
• Set the cameras WB to 5000K.
• f/8 aperture.
• ISO 200 or so.
• Shutter speed of about 1/125s to 1/200s.
• I use RAW, but JPEG would be just fine also, if you are so inclined.

I used to use light stands but I have since pivoted to setting my flat sided light on end at a 45 degree angle on one side of the camera lens and holding the other on the other side and slightly above. The placement of both lights largely depends on what I am trying to capture.

Camera:

Really does not matter. Any decent camera will do. Case in point here is a photo using the steps above taken with a 16MP micro four thirds Olympus OMD E-M5 from 2012.

Have used a 1″ sensor camera before.

Lens:

Can it focus fairly closely? Good. It will probably do just fine. Need to focus closer? Then…

Macro:

For very close detail pics I no longer use dedicated macro lenses. I have pivoted to using inexpensive AF tubes.

A simple solution that does the trick.

Most recently I used a near voting age DSLR and a favorite inexpensive zoom…

…to create images for a blog post.

Welp. That is about it. If you do give it a go it is my hope that you find success.

Happy capturing.

-ELW