Product Photography

[ryan]

I have been working on a website for some time now and, having looked through all my pictures as I post them, I have noticed a steady improvement in not only my workmanship but also in my photography skills over the years. However, I still am in need of some drastic improvement in picture quality. My shop is way too dark and I have been taking some pretty good ones outside. I have been using a little Kodak 6 megapixel that we got at Walmart a couple years ago. It does take pretty good pictures but I feel I'm ready to step up to an SLR. I've been looking at the Canon Rebel XT but thought I'd ask everyone here first. Also, I have seen some really cool DIY projects for making your own light boxes for product photography which would be great for holsters and wallets etc. But I am wondering what everyone does for their bigger projects like chaps and saddles. I just took photos of a pair of top grain show chaps I made for my wife and was very displeased with the quality of the pictures!! Are there any good references that anyone knows of that I could get somewhat of a crash course in digital photography?

P.S.

I'll be sure and let everyone know when I post my site!

Ryan

[TomSwede]

Don't get hooked up on cameramodels, all Canon SLR's will allow you to step up the ISO level pretty much without disturbing noise wich will be a good aid in your dark shop. I go with Canon because of the good variety of used lenses available on the market but I think Nikon will do just as fine.

For product photography you can do quite allright with longer shutterspeeds since the object will be static. Even lighting is more critical I think.

Therefore I recommend a good tripod and a remotecontrol trigger (can be found cheap on e-bay).

For product photography you'll want to blur out the background as much as possible to really make the object pop out of the picture and this can be resolved in different ways so I recommend you start in that end and look for what kind of lens you want. It's not the camera that makes the photographer but the lenses make a real difference. One get's what one pay for and sadly the little better lenses are incredibly more expensive.

I recommend that you rule out kitlenses for this type of photography aswell as wideangle lenses and if a zoom is really desired it's gonna cost some money.

Good luck with your next investment!

Tom

Edited January 14, 2008 by TomSwede

[TomSwede]

Oh forgot the obvious!

A macrolens would work just fine for you and not very expensive either only crotch is that they are useless as a "walkaround" lens.

Many portrait photographers prefer macrolenses and they sure do blur out the background.

Just make sure you control the field of depth properly with the f-stops or you'll end up with a (non)depth like this.

[paris3200]

Ryan,

You might want to check out www.photo.net. They have several articles on choosing a digital camera which can be found here. They also have a great forum that will be able to answer any other questions you might have.

Jason

PS: You can't go wrong with the Cannon Rebel XTi if you upgrade the kit lens.

[ericluther]

Ryan, I'm a professional photog and the rebel is a good camera if you have the right lens, for the money the 50mm prime lens is a great deal at around 80 bucks, being prime it doesnt zoom in or out, but it can give you great depth of field for "blurring out the background" I believe the aperture goes down to 1.4 so you can get photos in lower light conditions, and at lower ISOs so there less noisy.

Hope this helps

Eric

[gunfighter48]

With PVC pipe you can build a light box as big as you need; use the 1.5 or 2 in pipe for extra support. You can get clamp on reflectors and 100 watt daylight balanced compact fluorescent lights at Lowe's or Home Depot. The great thing with the fluorescent lights is they don't generate much heat. One thing worth spending some dollars on is a good tripod. You need one heavy enough to dampen out any vibrations and that will let you use longer exposure times to get great well lit photos.

Your local fabric store will yield many different fabrics that can be used as backgrounds and also as diffusers over the light box. Check you local camera stores or book stores for photography books. There are many many books about digital photography. While I haven't seen any geared to product photography per se, books on portrait photography would be of great help. The lighting principals are the same just switch the product for the person.

Canon cameras are excellent cameras. I've used Canons for over 30 years both as a professional and amateur photographer. I now have a Canon S3IS an excellent camera for the money. It's a mega zoom camera. 30 years of packing 20 to 40 lbs of camera gear took its toll on my back. So sold off all my gear and settled for a mega zoom, about 1 lb and it does everything that I need and then some. The new digitals do things that I could only dream about 15 years ago!!

Edited January 15, 2008 by gunfighter48

[Spencer G]

I use a Nikon D80 for all my photography, leather and otherwise, and couldn't be more happy with it. I have a comment on what TomSwede said about blurring the background. In my opinion, it would be better to simply have a background that isn't distracting and therefore doesn't need to be blurred. The reason is that when you use a really shallow depth of field, you risk having parts of your work out of focus if it is something small and you need to be close up. If you have a large enough aperture that the background is out of focus on a close up, then what is in focus will be a very thin plane, such as the cool butterfly picture that TomSwede posted. That picture doesnt have or need more than a few millimeters in focus, however, if you have a project that has some curvature to it, you want it all to be in focus. On the note of backgrounds, this web site has a pop-up soft box that would be a easy, albeit more expensive, way to accomplish the same thing as the do-it-yourself project with PVC pipes and paper.

[dbarleather]

Photgraphing my leather has been a long going battle. Purchased a Canon today and I'm like a kid in a candy store.

[rdb]

dbarleather,

Whose basketweave stamp is that? That's an awfully good, and consistent line impression.

[dbarleather]

dbarleather,

Whose basketweave stamp is that? That's an awfully good, and consistent line impression.

Ryan,

That is an Ellis Barnes stamp....my basketweave. Thanks for the compliment.