Anyone know anything about photography lights or tents?

M

matt3

Member
Jun 15, 2009
660
9
18
Trying to educate myself rather quickly and find a local shop that has camera lights and a tent for someone who takes product pictures... for christmas of course.

Typical issue is that on gloomy days, there isn't enough light by the sliding glass door for the pics to come out well. I believe a canon digital slr is being used with all the fancy lenses and things I know nothing about. I read a bunch or forums and most suggested camera lighting and a tent or light box. While this seems like a good idea, I'm not sure if this is the best solution or not to this problem.

Does this make sense to anyone who's into photography, and can you please tell me what would make a good solution?

I've found all sorts of light tent kits on amazon and specialized stores, but some have bad reviews indicating the lights suck or the hue is off from the bulbs. Kinda makes it hard to decipher what will work well.

Thank you for your help!
 


How big is the stuff? Your solution will be different if it's a car or a ring.

How bright the sun is shouldn't matter, you can compensate for that by using a slower shutter speed. A light tent can be used if it's a small product and you can get by with one or two cheap hotshoe flashguns. If it's something large you will need a proper setup with mains powered flashes and a cyclorama.
 
i don't know what kind of products you're working with but if you have a good camera, particularly one that will shoot in RAW, and you or someone can do the image editing, then you can probably squeak by with a less than ideal light setup.

I've done two sets of product photo shoots in a home made light box and both shoots were successes. The box is a big cardboard box with most of the front/top/sides cut out and replaced with thin white cotton cloth to diffuse the light. Full spectrum incandescent light bulbs inside cheap clamp style shop lights, propped against books to sit flush against the cloth on the sides and hanging from above to shine down through the top.

The back and bottom sides of the box are intact. I cut long sheets of heavy paper stock to fit the width of the box, white and a couple colors. If you're looking at the box, the paper starts at the near edge on the bottom and arcs back inside the box to the far edge on the top, like a wave. This makes a neutral 'endless' background in the image. I do thumbtack the paper down about halfway back the width of the box so there is some flat surface for the products to stand on.

The box is flimsy and ugly but it works. The lighting looked like shit when I shot in RAW but after I loaded the images into photoshop I could literally dial in the exposure levels I wanted for the images. RAW is fucking magic, it's like pausing pictures halfway through taking them and then completing them later with software. It's pretty sweet.

I'm not a photographer, I borrowed a friend's dslr for the shoots and hacked the lightbox myself. Took a little time in photoshop but they came out nice in the end.

tldr just follow a homemade lightbox tut and adapt it to what you're doing. If your slr shoots in RAW and you can use photoshop you should be fine.
 
If the item is small enough your scanner will take better pictures than your camera (ie... watches, jewelry, rings)

otherwise as mentioned earlier build your own if you want to take these b4 christmas
 
Look here on one I built last year

http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/118449-started-traditional-ecom-business-2.html#post1205909

I now actually got one like this:
LICHTWÜRFEL 80/80/80 CM Foto Ministudio + 4 Hintergrund: Amazon.de: Kamera & Foto

There are links to amazon.com ones in the linked post, actually.

Nice about that one is that
- it folds up very nicely
- It actually has a front piece with a slit to poke the camera lens through (can be removed), which is a godsend when taking pictures of reflective surfaces (jewelry, etc..)

::emp::
 
In my opinion light boxes make items look dull and boring. Include reflections in your images from the surrounding world and the result will be much more realistic and attractive.

To prove it, here's a stock photo of a watch that I sell, obviously taken professionally in a light tent and is what the company supplies to their stockists.

31ZMX28HMSL._SL500_AA300_.jpg


Compared to a photo I took in my retail store using a shitty Canon point and shoot in macro mode.

zyeibc.jpg


SLR = waste of money
 
Dude, that picture you took looks dirt cheap.

Yes, the "official" picture is shit (I even doubt it is a photograph, but if it is, it has been shpped to hell and back), but so is yours.

::emp::
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom