Product Photography Help

[Lane]

Lately I've been working on getting a business going and one of the more difficult aspects has been product photography. The products I'm working on are stainless steel barware (shot glasses) and trying to get consistent lighting, focus, etc. has been quite the challenge. Sometimes images come out looking good while other times the images appear washed out or grainy. I'm currently using a Galaxy A23 phone which has an okay camera but I may switch to an iPhone 15 in the future. With the site I'm currently using for sales I'm limited on image size so keeping it around 3000 X 2250 (4:3) image seems to be working best.

The best images I've gotten have been outside but not in direct sunlight which seems to work with shiny objects but even then it seems like shot quality can change a lot from take to take. I have tried taking images indoors with a white light and trying to diffuse the light with materials like tissue paper but was still getting pretty hard reflections in certain areas. The first three images below I think are pretty good (although some variation in lighting amount) but the fourth seems more harsh with the reflections.

Ideally I think it would be great to do this all indoors so lighting can be controlled and the shot consistency should be better but let me know what you all think.

Thanks!

[JeeperCreeper]

For shiny things, I try to shoot outside with overcast skies. It makes for balanced lighting. Your best bet is to use a camera that you can manually adjust Iso, shutter speed, and F-stop to balance out your shot. Your A23 might have a "pro" mode for this. Otherwise the IPhone is going to probably produce your best results for what you have on hand.

Personally I'd use a DSLR camera, you can get pretty decent used cameras for cheap.

[Lane]

For shiny things, I try to shoot outside with overcast skies. It makes for balanced lighting. Your best bet is to use a camera that you can manually adjust Iso, shutter speed, and F-stop to balance out your shot. Your A23 might have a "pro" mode for this. Otherwise the IPhone is going to probably produce your best results for what you have on hand.

Personally I'd use a DSLR camera, you can get pretty decent used cameras for cheap.

Agreed on the iPhone; the A23's pro mode has ISO, EV and WB so I'll mess with those a bit and look into some other apps that may open up more features.

[JeeperCreeper]

That pro mode will get rid of some of the variability between shots. The auto mode adjusts depending on what it decides to focus on.

[Daltech]

Bruh. You must not work in movies, it’s just like taking pictures but they move. Throw up some flags and a cutter. Google it- film production flags.

What, no Gaffers on MCB?

Seriously though, lemme know if you have anymore questions as I do work in production and see this stuff daily. Car commercials etc…

[Daltech]

Throw up some flags so I can’t see your bedroom door anymore.

[flyweightnate]

I work for a bearing company, so taking photos of shiny metal objects with a cell phone is somewhat a specialty of mine. On site, it's a crapshoot, but when I bring one home for a thorough FA, I like to line a big cardboard box with white paper, and use white tissue between the bearing and my giant overhead LEDs in the garage.

I'm also using a loupe or macro lens more often than not to show minute details, but the white shades really do help balance the highs and lows on the polished, curved surfaces.

[Lane]

Thanks Fly, I'll give those suggestions a shot. I think I have some white poster board I can use to bounce light off of.

[flyweightnate]

The most neurotic of the engineers shoots through a white paper cone, so he can completely seal the box of un-diffused light.

[Painthappy]

I would say 60% is the photo and the other 40% is photoshop and lightroom

I messed with one of your photos real quick



Thing is, each their own. I just cropped it a bit more and tweaked it a tad.

Flash boxes are great, but depends on what you're going for. You can use a flashbox and mirror and get something like this:



That's my camera in a flash box, two flashes, sitting on a mirror at a slight upward angle. I used a black background so I could easily darken it in lightroom and black it out without making the edges of the camera look funny.

I like your board idea though for the product you're going for though. A good camera and lens will do wonders, but only if you know what you're doing. A phone camera works fine, but try to shoot it in the evening say 5 or 6 o clock, so the sun isn't directly over head, have the sun behind you.

Other ideas:



Cool right? It is my helmet on a tripod and edited out the tripod in photoshop. Gives it a cool look. Feel free to steal any ideas as all mine are stolen also. By best recommendation is to scan flickr (my second home) or other places that might have product photos and do your best to recreate your favorites. Some will work, some won't.

I'm no expert, but hit me up if you have questions as this is definitely in my wheelhouse.

Also don't worry about photo size. The bigger the better for resolution and then you can always bring it down to the size you need from there.

Otherwise, what you currently have is looking good already. Just keep messing with it. Like I did one for my wife for the racing company she's an ambassador at:



Object in the foreground, stuff in the background. Sort of a product as inspiration... Anyhow, that's all I got.

[Lane]

Thanks for the insight everyone; starting to get some more consistent imagery and with a little editing work in Canva they're getting better. Definitely having the best luck shooting images in the morning out of direct sunlight and using the highest optical zoom to limit camera reflection on the glasses.