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.

 Make It Bigger

What a diffuser, like a softbox or umbrella, is doing to light

The most important factor affecting the quality of your light is the size of the source. A larger light source — whether it's physically larger, made larger with a diffuser or reflector of some kind, or even just closer to the subject — will help you keep the contrast under control. The shadows will be less murky and softer edged, and the highlights will be less "hot" and flat. The overall dynamic range of the scene won't be so extreme that your camera can't capture it, so the image it produces will be of a higher quality with richer colors. And as a bonus, this soft light looks more appealing to most people. You solve a lot of problems with this technique.

How do we actually do it, though? Sometimes, it's done for us. Photographers who say they love natural lighting often mean indirect sunlight coming through the windows and reflecting off the walls, which is a naturally large light source. So is an overcast but bright day, or the "Golden Hour" around dawn and dusk. (High noon on a clear day is natural light too, but gives very hard and awkwardly-placed shadows, so it's not always a good thing. The sun is a pretty big light source, but it's so far away that its apparent size is pretty small.)

A good solution is to use some sort of diffusion on your main light. This is basically a translucent surface that catches a lot of light from a small light source, and redirects it from a much larger area. It basically becomes a very large, very soft light source, even though it's not actually creating the light. There are also reflectors that achieve the same goal by bouncing the light back. I'll refer to both as diffusers here, since there are a lot of light modifiers that can work as either. You'll get the best results using them with a flash, because all diffusers do cost you some light, but you can really use it with any light source that's powerful enough to begin with.

The cheapest and simplest diffuser is an umbrella (not the kind you'd use in the rain, though they're basically built the same way). They're very easy to use. You can shoot the light through the outer surface, or you can bounce the light off the inner surface. In either case, just imagine it's a giant spotlight shining on your product and aim it — because it's so large and soft, it's really hard to miss.

Typically you'd want an umbrella, a light stand to hold it, and a shoe mount to connect them. The Westcott 2332 43-Inch Collapsible Umbrella Flash Kit is a good solution. It's not super-cheap ($70) but it's a very good value: the umbrella and stand are large enough to shoot most products, even small furniture; the pieces of the kit are not terribly cheap or flimsy; and it's very compact when not in use. Except for a camera, a flash, and a connector, all of which we'll talk about soon, this is really all you need for a basic, powerful light kit. The umbrella that comes in this kit has a removable black cover, so you can use it as a reflective or a shoot-through umbrella; I generally use it as a shoot-through because I can place it much closer to the subject that way, and that makes it a larger and therefore softer light source.

Don't Waste Light

You can also use a reflector to bounce some of the wasted light that would normally be outside your scene back onto your subject, softening shadows and lightening the subject. This isn't going to get you a lot of light, but it can help with the quality of what you have. The nice thing is that it's really, really cheap and easy.

Both were taken in afternoon sunlight, ISO 400, 1/40th second at f/5.0.

Take these photos of some snail shells. By itself, the sunlight was giving me (barely) enough for a good exposure, since I was using a tripod. I ended up increasing the exposure of both by +2/3 in post, which I could easily do because I shot RAW.

The sunlight was already nice and soft because it's a cloudy day, and my kitchen doesn't get direct sunlight in the afternoon.  That means the shadows aren't going to be particularly hard-edged. But in the top image, the shadows underneath and between the shells are a little dark. I'd like to see that the shadows are there, because that helps define the texture and shape of the shells, but I don't want them to hide anything.

I fixed this by taking a sheet of white printer paper and holding it just to the right of the shells — the opposite side of the light source. The sunlight bounced off the paper to fill in those shadows, adding about a third of a stop of light to the scene. The original is usable, but the second try is better. You can see underneath the right-most shell and the edges are less exaggerated, without losing the shade completely.

Reflectors are easy to use, especially in natural light where you can see what effect they're having instantly.  The key trick is to identify the areas that need more light and positioning the reflector so it's reaching those areas. On its own, it wouldn't fix an un-lit scene, but it helped this under-lit one. Larger subjects, like a model wearing clothing, would need a much larger reflector because you'll need to bounce much more light.

This is definitely a tool that's easy to DIY. Printer paper and posterboard are pretty cheap, for example, or a white sunlit wall. If you find yourself in shooting scenarios like this often, you may want to consider something like the Westcott 40" 5-in-1 reflector. The main advantages to a professional reflector over a DIY solution are durability, ease of use and storage, and color consistency (I'll talk more about that later, but for now know that "white" paper is never really white). This 5-in-1 reflector also works as a few other tools, including a diffuser. The disadvantage is that it costs about $30 — and note that this reflector is not a complete kit like the umbrella I linked to above, so you'd need something to hold it in place. Because it's probably not going to be a make-or-break item for most people, I wouldn't say this is the first place to put your money, but you may find that it's a good value for your workflow.

These are two basic, relatively cheap techniques that are fairly easy to use. Diffusing the main light and bouncing back from a different angle to fill in shadows will get you very, very far. It's not the most jaw-droppingly creative thing you can do with light, but it will help you get your product photography past the first worst hurdles. You're probably going to find that it's just not enough light though, and for that, you'll need a flash.

Manual or TTL flash for macro?

Green metallic bee
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Having switched from a manual to a TTL flash for my bug macro work, I do really appreciate the consistency it gives me between shots. I very rarely have to seriously adjust the exposure in post -- or if I do, it's the same adjustment across a series.

Having 2nd curtain sync is great, too. I've definitely gotten shots with visible motion blur that are usable, even pretty good, but where I can tell that I would have junked it using 1st curtain sync. The difference is in 1st curtain sync, the flash makes the exposure and then any motion gets exposed while the shutter is still open, so the blur is actually leading the motion; in 2nd curtain sync, the motion is exposed before the flash fires, so any blur is trailing the motion, like our brains expect. The image with this post is a good example: I've gotten many photos of sweat bees with leading blur that would have looked fine with trailing blur.

TTL flashes can be used as manual flashes, are generally built better, and generally have a better manufacturer's warranty if you get them new. The only real downside is the major price difference, which can be really significant when you're comparing a $40 Yongnuo with a $280 Canon. So the benefits are real and noticeable, but whether they're worth paying $240 for is definitely going to be an individual call.

But my real point here is that there are two things I've noticed lately that may not be obvious to someone considering what kind of flash to buy for shooting insects.

The first is that TTLs fire a pre-flash, which they use to gauge how much light to put out, and then the camera opens the shutter and fires the actual flash pulse. This happens nearly instantly. But some insects, like smaller flies, are actually so fast that they can be startled by the pre-flash and fly away before the actual flash fires -- especially if you're shooting with 2nd curtain sync, where there's an extra 1/250th of a second to react in. Manual flash doesn't have this problem.

The other gotcha is that you can't always tell if your flash is positioned efficiently. On a manual flash, it's obvious if the flash gets out of position, because you start underexposing; if you don't change the setting, it's not going to change itself just because the sensor wants more light. But that's exactly what a TTL flash does.

You might be thinking, "and that's why I want one", but it's not. You want TTL to automatically deal with changes in scene: changes in focal distance as you back away just a bit, changes in the leaves around the subject as they blow in and out of frame, changes in composition as you follow an ant across a white flower, etc. But you want to know the flash is shooting roughly where you want it, somewhere around 1/32nd to 1/8th power, to take advantage of the fastest flash pulse you can. When you start shooting at 1/4, 1/2, full power because you're only catching the subject with the dimmer edge of the flash beam, the exposure is basically slowing down and you start recording a lot more movement. Motion blur becomes very noticeable. On top of that, the flash takes longer to recycle, and it obviously drains the batteries faster.

I get around this by checking every now and then by switching over to manual to see what power level I'm basically firing at. If you've been shooting with a TTL speedlight and you've found some of your bug shots are inexplicably blurry from time to time, this might be the problem.

Neither of those two things are deal breakers for me. In fact, I doubt they'd have affected my decision to get a TTL flash at all if I'd known, since I didn't get it just for insects. They do affect how I use the 430EX II though, so if you're thinking about what flash to get for this kind of photography, consider this an FYI.

WhiBal and color temperature

I picked up a WhiBal color balance card and, though I haven't had the chance to do any really critical (or even really interesting) photography the past few weeks, it's already given me great results with some easy, casual shots. White balance is one of those subtle things that's hard to get right, but really stands out when it's wrong. Fairly or not, when I'm looking a photographer's work, it's the first thing that gives me an impression of their technical skill.

The card is a small, neutral piece of plastic that you use to determine an accurate white balance, either with a custom white balance before shooting, or as a batch setting in post-production. It comes in several sizes; I got one about the size of a business card, because I do a lot of macro and wanted a smallish one, but for larger scenes Amazon carries a 3.5"x6" Studio size, and there's a wider variety directly from the manufacturer. It comes with a stand, a lanyard, and a thin, cheap-feeling case; they also make a really small one that attaches to your keychain. One nice aspect of the card is that the color comes from the material, not a printed surface, so any scratches won't affect its effectiveness. There's a sticker on one side that's used for setting white and black points in post, and it has an autofocus target as well.

The WhiBal looks like a typical Kodak gray card used for exposure (in that both are gray rectangles), but the two are used for different purposes. A gray card has a standard 18% reflectivity, so your camera's light meter gives you a consistent exposure with them. But they're not entirely neutral in color, and they aren't even the same color in different types of light -- so using a gray card for white balance will give you the wrong color temperature, and it won't even be a predictable amount of wrong in different situations. On the other hand, the WhiBal isn't 18% gray, and using it for exposure will be a bit off; I'm not sure by how much, or how consistently, but I'll bet you could experiment with exposure compensation to meter off the white and black sticker.

In a RAW workflow, you use the WhiBal by placing it in the scene you're shooting, adjust the angle so you don't see any glare on the stickers, and taking a shot of it. Then you go on shooting as normal. If the lighting conditions change, take another shot. Once you're in post-production, you can use the "click white balance" tool of your digital darkroom on the card, and then copy that setting across all the images in those lighting conditions. All the software I've used has a batch-copy tool to make this simple. It's supremely easy and consistent -- it takes about five seconds to shoot the card, and another five to set the entire shoot's white balance.

By the way, in case you're interested, I've measured the color temperature of my Vivitar 285HV flash as 5750 degrees, with a tint of -2 in LR. My 40D's on-camera flash measures 6400 degrees, with no tint adjustment.

The image of the robin above was balanced using the WhiBal card, and for the photography I do -- which is very nature and animal oriented -- it's a great example of the card's impact. Auto white balance was totally off. The Daylight setting I was shooting in was just slightly too warm, and like many images I've taken in the fall and winter, the dried leaves just looked subtly wrong. It's not terribly visible in the comparison image, but it's something that's bothered me for a long time, and I picked this specific image because the WhiBal's setting made the colors of the dead foliage feel "right" for the first time.

So the verdict is good. It's easy to use, tremendously helpful, and not terribly expensive, even for a low-budget photographer like myself. I wish I'd gotten one earlier.

Shooting manual

Shooting with the camera in manual mode is probably the most intimidating skill to new photographers.  It's not that it's particularly hard, and there are definitely more complicated skills to grasp, but it's one of the most visible challenges when you first pick up a camera: how do I use the M on the dial?  It's a sign of status, separating the real photogs from the snapshotters.

Which is crap, because placing technical skills on that kind of pedestal is losing sight of that fact that only the final image counts.  Your audience won't give you bonus points for shooting in one mode or another, and knowing how to shoot manual does not automatically give you the vision to use it.  If you're taking boring pictures in automatic, you'll be taking boring pictures in manual.  Composition is entirely in your eyes and your brain, and all manual mode, or any other feature of your camera, will do is help you translate your vision into a photograph.

That said, learning how to use full manual or one of the priority modes gives you control over the image.  The camera cannot read your mind, and unless you understand how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO interact to control the exposure and depth of field, you're going to up missing shots.  Guaranteed.  Technical skills are vitally important, and you can't ignore them without sacrificing your potential as a photographer -- not to mention if you spent a lot of money on a camera that can give you this control but refuse to learn it, you'd have saved a lot of money by getting a cheap compact.

But full-manual mode is probably less important than understanding metering modes, white balance, or shooting in RAW and post-processing, for example.  It's easy to do, by the way, once you've learned to read the camera's light meter in the viewfinder -- you're not expected to just know what shutter speed you need to get a proper exposure with a given aperture.

But bear in mind that setting aperture and adjusting the shutter until the meter looks good is no different than shooting in aperture mode and setting exposure compensation, unless you need more exposure compensation than your camera can do -- which isn't likely, except in specific circumstances.  If you trust the camera meter to tell you when you've turned the dial far enough in manual, you can trust it to turn the dial for you.  Just remember you can't trust it to turn all the dials for you.

(Exposure compensation, in case you haven't used it before, is easy and useful.  Most of the time your camera is metering with the assumption that you want the scene to be, on average, an even, neutral gray -- in terms of brightness, not color.  Setting the EC will adjust the target exposure, in case you want it brighter or darker than that, or if you're shooting something that will fool the meter.  For example, it's hard for the camera to know that snow is really supposed to be white in color, and it usually needs about +2/3 EC to get it right.  Or if you don't mind underexposing just a touch to get a slightly faster shutter speed, you can use -1/3 EC.)

Anyway, if you're intimidated by the big M, try using shutter or aperture priority.  Experiment with those modes until you have a good sense of what you're doing when you're changing the aperture or shutter, and I promise you your ability to create images you're proud of will increase 10000%.  And don't listen to anybody saying 'real' photographers do this or that.  There's nothing wrong with mastering one new thing at a time, at your own pace, and shooting manual does not have to be at the top of your list.