What are the best resources for Indoor Product Photography?

Question

I would like to know if there any good online resources for indoor product photography ?

Preferably with a Table Top setup.

Im looking for commercial grade product photography tutorials/resources.

I would like to add that I already own a Tabletop setup. It includes 3 Lights, a Cube box where the product is placed etc. I would be using a Nikon D90 camera.

Dan Wolfgang · Accepted Answer

The light tent/cube isn't really a product that will help you extend your photographic skill. It's designed to make the process easy and make anything look pretty good: just put the object inside the tent, position the lights around so that the whole tent is lit, and take a photo. The tent won't allow you to add a hard light for an accent, for example, because it's, well, an enclosed tent.

To really grow you need to move to just working on a table top with additional lights and modifiers. A couple umbrellas or softboxes will let you light the subject in very much the same way as the tent does, but you'll now have room to add an accent light or two, which might be responsible for showing off some detail on the product, or better lighting a difficult area of the product.

Strobist is a great place to learn about lighting anything. Once you understand how to use the light and light modifiers, you can apply it to anything, including product photography. If you want video, I can highly recommend Strobist's Lighting in Layers DVDs.

chills42 · Answer

A light tent is a good way to do it.  There are a few different designs, each of which have their own pros and cons.

How to Make An Inexpensive Light Tent – DIY
Homemade Light Box for Product Photography

I like these two in particular, because they are easy to make, inexpensive, and fairly small, which allows for easy setup/storage.

Edit:

One good tutorial I know of is from Ken Rockwell.

Summary:

It's all about the lighting.
You can put the item on a glass surface to reduce shadows.
Use a macro lens, so you can fill the frame.
Use a smaller aperture to increase the depth of field, so that the entire product is in focus and sharp.

Matt Grum · Answer

The book Light Science and Magic is just about the best resource on product photography for beginners. It's about lighting in general but it's written by a product photographer and most of the material and importantly the examples relates to indoor small product photography (there's a bit on portraits later on).

It's very easy to read yet in covers the vast majority of product shoots you're likely to come across, starting from basic principals (inverse square law, hard and soft light, specular and diffuse reflections) and then goes through each type of material (metal, glass, etc.) in turn, including a section on troubleshooting and emergency techniques for really difficult subjects.

You can preview the fourth edition of the book on Google or Amazon.

If you've got a spare $30 I'd highly recommend picking up a hard copy of the latest edition.

What are the best resources for Indoor Product Photography?

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