Apologies for not continuing my product photography series in a timely fashion — I'm working on moving the backend of the blog over to Wordpress, and there are a few technical things to clear up before I can do that. Namely this involves having a unified theme through the blog and gallery halves of the website. I've also spent about half of the last month visiting family out of state.
Getting this all in order will take a day or two longer, and then I'll have the next post in my product photo series up posthaste.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
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
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.
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.
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 |
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. |
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.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
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.
I do want to say that lighting has an intimidating and steep learning curve when you first dive in. I don't mean to scare you off — you should just be aware that everyone finds it difficult at first. That's normal. You'll be learning how all the gear fits together, what effect the light actually has on your photographs, and how to control all of that at the same time, so it's a lot of new concepts to grasp at once. So don't worry if it takes a bit of time before it clicks. Fortunately it's really not difficult to do what you need for basic product photography.
What Can Go Wrong?
Before we look at what we need to do to shoot our products, let's take a minute to consider the technical challenges that get in the way.
One problem is that the light in most of our homes is really dim, too dark to easily make a good exposure. The camera has three ways to deal with this, and each one leads to other compromises.
There's a second problem with household light fixtures: the image is going to come out with a yellow or orange cast. This is because cameras are surprisingly bad at guessing the color temperature (the natural hue of a light source) of these kinds of bulbs, while our eyes automatically adjust to it. This subject deserves its own post, but for now, don't worry too much. It's very easy to work a fix into your product shoots, and there's no need to buy special light bulbs to deal with the problem.
A lot of lighting problems stem from the fact that most cameras can't capture a very wide dynamic range between the brightest and darkest points in a scene. Think of the camera's dynamic range as a slot that all the light has to fit through. Any part of the scene that's too far to one side — too bright or too dark — won't be recorded in the photograph. It's the visual equivalent of a speaker clipping. A scene with more dynamic range than the camera can capture will turn into an image with contrast problems, with important areas that lose their detail, or with altered colors; in short, one that just doesn't represent what your product actually looks like.
The image to the right is an example of this. Would you be able to tell that this is a green metal bottle? Can you tell for sure what kind of green it is, or what sort of surface texture it has? Look at how the highlights don't merge into the areas around them, and instead sort of blotch up. Look at the shadow regions along the edge of the bottle, and how you can't really tell where the bottle ends and the background begins. The lighting is very restricted, so parts of the bottle are getting too much light, most none at all, and only a small area is getting enough to expose it normally. This is a great water bottle, but this photo will never sell it to anyone.
Our eyes do a much, much better job of seeing in difficult lighting than cameras, and this gives us really poor instincts about what cameras can actually do. A good camera might be able to capture nine or ten stops of light at once, while the human eye can capture about twenty. A stop is a generic unit of measurement in photography, where +1 stop of something doubles it — so that ten-stop difference is not a 2x difference, it's a 1024x difference. (Stops are used to measure everything to do with exposures, so you'll hear it referring to light or time, or sometimes ISO sensitivity.)
This problem is made worse by the fact that the camera's computer often can't tell what's most important in the scene. You may not really care if the window in the background is overexposed or not, but the camera may decide to underexpose the whole scene just to protect that little trivial bit. We'll talk more about how to get the camera to stop making dumb choices later, but it's something to watch out for in any case.
The last big problem is the quality of the light itself. This is the one that takes the most work to address, but dealing with has the fortunate side-effect of dealing with all the dynamic range problems. It means looking at the light for all its creative possibilities and using it to define the shape and texture of your product in a flattering way. I pointed out how the light in the photo above is really reaching a very small area, and that's part of this. This is a very deep rabbit hole to get into, but we'll start a bit with the next post, where we'll look at different types of light sources and how to control them in order to deal with all the problems we've identified here.
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.
I do want to say that lighting has an intimidating and steep learning curve when you first dive in. I don't mean to scare you off — you should just be aware that everyone finds it difficult at first. That's normal. You'll be learning how all the gear fits together, what effect the light actually has on your photographs, and how to control all of that at the same time, so it's a lot of new concepts to grasp at once. So don't worry if it takes a bit of time before it clicks. Fortunately it's really not difficult to do what you need for basic product photography.
What Can Go Wrong?
Before we look at what we need to do to shoot our products, let's take a minute to consider the technical challenges that get in the way.
One problem is that the light in most of our homes is really dim, too dark to easily make a good exposure. The camera has three ways to deal with this, and each one leads to other compromises.
- It can increase the sensitivity of its sensor (the ISO rating) so that it needs less light to make the exposure, which also increases the amount of noise, or individual pixels that show a totally random color or brightness. Many consumer cameras unfortunately don't get very usable results at high ISOs.
- It can open the lens up to a larger (we usually say wider) aperture to let more light in, which also decreases how much of the subject is going to be in focus, and its ability to do this depends entirely on the lens.
- It can use a slower shutter speed so that the sensor has more time to collect light, but longer shutter speeds mean any movement in the camera or the subject will blur the final image.
There's a second problem with household light fixtures: the image is going to come out with a yellow or orange cast. This is because cameras are surprisingly bad at guessing the color temperature (the natural hue of a light source) of these kinds of bulbs, while our eyes automatically adjust to it. This subject deserves its own post, but for now, don't worry too much. It's very easy to work a fix into your product shoots, and there's no need to buy special light bulbs to deal with the problem.
 | |
| An example of contrast problems from poor product lighting. |
The image to the right is an example of this. Would you be able to tell that this is a green metal bottle? Can you tell for sure what kind of green it is, or what sort of surface texture it has? Look at how the highlights don't merge into the areas around them, and instead sort of blotch up. Look at the shadow regions along the edge of the bottle, and how you can't really tell where the bottle ends and the background begins. The lighting is very restricted, so parts of the bottle are getting too much light, most none at all, and only a small area is getting enough to expose it normally. This is a great water bottle, but this photo will never sell it to anyone.
Our eyes do a much, much better job of seeing in difficult lighting than cameras, and this gives us really poor instincts about what cameras can actually do. A good camera might be able to capture nine or ten stops of light at once, while the human eye can capture about twenty. A stop is a generic unit of measurement in photography, where +1 stop of something doubles it — so that ten-stop difference is not a 2x difference, it's a 1024x difference. (Stops are used to measure everything to do with exposures, so you'll hear it referring to light or time, or sometimes ISO sensitivity.)
This problem is made worse by the fact that the camera's computer often can't tell what's most important in the scene. You may not really care if the window in the background is overexposed or not, but the camera may decide to underexpose the whole scene just to protect that little trivial bit. We'll talk more about how to get the camera to stop making dumb choices later, but it's something to watch out for in any case.
The last big problem is the quality of the light itself. This is the one that takes the most work to address, but dealing with has the fortunate side-effect of dealing with all the dynamic range problems. It means looking at the light for all its creative possibilities and using it to define the shape and texture of your product in a flattering way. I pointed out how the light in the photo above is really reaching a very small area, and that's part of this. This is a very deep rabbit hole to get into, but we'll start a bit with the next post, where we'll look at different types of light sources and how to control them in order to deal with all the problems we've identified here.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
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.
My assumption here is that you, as your business owner, feel that your product photography is holding back sales and that you’re willing to invest in the equipment and education you need to move it forward. The setups I’ll recommend will range in price, but to do it right from scratch will start at a few hundred dollars. It’s up to you to determine your budget, but as you do, you should keep in mind that this is a legitimate business expense — marketing is not optional, after all.
Your photography setup and workflow need to make business sense. At the moment they probably don't, since they're not supporting your sales. But any money or time you spend to get to that point needs to pay for itself eventually. The upfront costs of the equipment, the cost of your time to learn to use it, and the ongoing cost of your time to shoot and process the products all need to be recouped through your sales. How long are you comfortable taking to pay back this expense? Six months? A year? Longer? If you need to adjust your prices to do this, how will that affect your market?
And eventually you'll need to replace parts of your photo kit. Fortunately, photo gear can last a long time if you treat it well, and you probably won't have a real need to upgrade every time a new camera body or something comes out. Your workflow won't stop working because somebody else has a bigger lens, after all.
Now, I'm a photographer and not a business specialist, so I'm not really the one to go into detail about how to do all that. You should talk to your tax adviser about making this deductible, and maybe even a local bank or credit union about microloans to make it possible if necessary. If you can’t make a good business case for it or you just don’t have the time or interest to dedicate to it, you may want to consider hiring a photographer to do it for you — for a lot of people, this is the more sensible route. (And heck, if you're in the Boston area or sell easily-shipped items, I might be able to help you out with that, since it's part of my business.)
Ideally, at this point, everything I've said so far is at least a little bit obvious and you're excited to get to the actual photography. Links to the rest of the series are below, or you can click here.
Lighting
Typical Lighting Challenges
Controlling Light With Diffusers and Reflectors
My assumption here is that you, as your business owner, feel that your product photography is holding back sales and that you’re willing to invest in the equipment and education you need to move it forward. The setups I’ll recommend will range in price, but to do it right from scratch will start at a few hundred dollars. It’s up to you to determine your budget, but as you do, you should keep in mind that this is a legitimate business expense — marketing is not optional, after all.
Your photography setup and workflow need to make business sense. At the moment they probably don't, since they're not supporting your sales. But any money or time you spend to get to that point needs to pay for itself eventually. The upfront costs of the equipment, the cost of your time to learn to use it, and the ongoing cost of your time to shoot and process the products all need to be recouped through your sales. How long are you comfortable taking to pay back this expense? Six months? A year? Longer? If you need to adjust your prices to do this, how will that affect your market?
 |
A toy pachyrhinosaurus , an example of this sort of photography. |
And eventually you'll need to replace parts of your photo kit. Fortunately, photo gear can last a long time if you treat it well, and you probably won't have a real need to upgrade every time a new camera body or something comes out. Your workflow won't stop working because somebody else has a bigger lens, after all.
Now, I'm a photographer and not a business specialist, so I'm not really the one to go into detail about how to do all that. You should talk to your tax adviser about making this deductible, and maybe even a local bank or credit union about microloans to make it possible if necessary. If you can’t make a good business case for it or you just don’t have the time or interest to dedicate to it, you may want to consider hiring a photographer to do it for you — for a lot of people, this is the more sensible route. (And heck, if you're in the Boston area or sell easily-shipped items, I might be able to help you out with that, since it's part of my business.)
Ideally, at this point, everything I've said so far is at least a little bit obvious and you're excited to get to the actual photography. Links to the rest of the series are below, or you can click here.
Lighting
Typical Lighting Challenges
Controlling Light With Diffusers and Reflectors