NYFalls.com Talk

Hi everyone,

One of my clients, a hospital, wants to sell about 50-60 beauty products (e.g. skin care, etc.) on their website. They don't have product photos. I thought it would be a good opportunity to set up my own small studio in-home and do the shoot myself. I think I can get by with my camera/lenses. What I'm uncertain about is lights. I plan on shooting the products against a white paper roll or similar type of backdrop. What light setup would work with this? For example, how many lights? Power? Other equipment required?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

Andy

How big are the products?
A light tent is probably the best thing.
You can then use daylight or CFL bulbs with flex arm lamps.

Otherwise, you can pick up kits on ebay for home studios. they come with at least a white and black cloth backdrop. You would need at least two soft boxes to light the front. You can get fancier by putting more light behind the object, usually using a lamp reflected on an umbrella, that lights up the backdrop so it is brighter than the object. This will make it pure white if you expose properly, and keep the object within an acceptable exposure.

Thanks Matt that's great advice. The products will be small boxes containing things like a tube of skin cream. Normal skin care sized stuff.

I like your idea of adding light to the backdrop. This will make it much easier to cut out the products if we want to.

Thanks again. I'll let you know what I come up with.

I ended up getting a kit at the local photo store. 2 800w lights with stands, a soft box and an umbrella. The 800w were just $50 more than the 400w and can be dialed down, so I went with the stronger just in case I need it in the future. Also got an 80cm light tent, makes things very easy. The lights shine through the tent, softening the light. The size is plenty big for even large products or product sets. It comes with 4 different color cloths (black/white/red/blue).

Best of all I bought a lens to take the product photos -- Canon 100mm L IS Macro. Fantastic so far, even the first light photos with the studio. And incredibly fun in the yard photographing flies and bugs. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this lens.

Andy

I should have gotten the adjustable lighting when I got my kit. I often find myself unscrewing some bulbs to get the right light. Good find.