Not a lot going on
I haven’t done much photo work lately; no bugs and a new day job haven’t left much opportunity. However, I did a little write-up of a new watch I bought myself as a birthday present, which you can find on my side-blog Flying Seamonsters. Things I learned shooting for that post: it is not easier to just keep trying to photograph your own wrist than it is to just rig up the tethered shooting setup.
Basic Product Photography Lighting, Part 2
We’re looking at ways to improve the lighting in your home selling business’s product photography. In Part 1, we looked at the main sales-killing technical problems that poor lighting leads to.
The main problem most people are going to have is that there’s just not enough light to work with. The best solution is to add light with a flash, which isn’t as expensive or difficult as people generally think, but many people prefer shooting with natural light. This has its limitations — it means you’re relying on the weather for an important part of your sales strategy — but it may work for you. In any event, there are some techniques to improve the quality of your light no matter what the source, and we’ll look at them first. If you’re regularly shooting at a decent ISO, like 400 or lower, and are still getting a shutter speed that’s at least 1/250 (or say 1/100 if you have a tripod), you have enough light that you can control it a bit and still get a good exposure.
Basic Product Photography Lighting, Part 1
It may seem strange that I’m talking about lighting your product photographs before talking about cameras themselves. The camera is actually one of the easiest pieces of the puzzle to do right, though, and learning a few basics about lighting will get you 90% of the way to where you want to be. It’s the fundamental concept in photography, really. I don’t mean just learning about strobes and umbrellas, but how a camera depends on the light in a scene.
When we think about lighting, we’re really thinking about two related concepts. The first is controlling the light in the scene so that the camera is able to make a good exposure that doesn’t have any distracting technical problems. The second is using light for dramatic, creative effects. Generally speaking, we’ll focus on the first meaning here — lighting for effect is fun and interesting, but first things first. This is going to be a practical and efficient approach, to get you started.
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Basic Product Photography For Home Sellers
This is the first post in a new ongoing series, aimed towards business owners whose sales depend on the quality of the photographs of their products, but don’t really have much experience behind the camera. If you’re selling on Etsy or eBay or your own web site, and you’re frustrated because you just can’t get the images your products deserve, then I hope this series will be helpful to you.
chronotography
My fantastic little dive watch, a Seiko SKX173. Good lighting practice, and a shiny little thing to look at.