Taking great product photos, beings in a great photo studio
In a previous post, I’ve described the planning of a small product photography studio. Several weeks of decorating, installing and one burned drill later the studio space has been finished and fully equipped, so let’s see how it came out and how it is set up.
- Part 1: Planning, budget and design
- Part 2: Realisation, setup and workflow
- Part 3: Printed product photography examples
The room
In the beginning, there was …not much. But with a bit of imagination and paint, the place could be transformed into something more.
Decorating in progress
The result is a nice, welcoming space and fully functional Photographic Studio.
Finished Studio
Computer access for tethering and editing
All the bits & pieces
As mentioned in an earlier post, the room’s small size meant there might be a risk of accidental light bounce off the walls and affect photographed objects. According to some Internet research, the best would be black but it would create a truly gloomy atmosphere and that could affect the whole experience in a negative way. Therefore a middle ground or “mid-grey” or “NCS 6000-N” was chosen for the walls and any furniture had to be black. From the first test shots, I can say that it worked and even highly reflective objects seemed not to reveal any details of the room.
Setup
| Item | Manufacturer | Model |
| Camera | Canon | EOS 550D |
| Lens | Canon | EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 USM IS |
| Tripod | Manfrotto | 055-B + 804 RC2 Head |
| Flash lights | Elinchrom | BXRi 250 (x2) |
| Boom | Elinchrom | Polystand |
| Reflector | No name | 110cm 5-in-1 |
| Backdrop | Colorama | 1.35m paper roll (x3) |
| Backdrop support | Interfit | INT312 Wall Mounting Kit |
| Table top | No name | Recycled desks |
| Trestles | Apple | Mac Pro boxes (x2) |
In terms of the photographic equipment, our Studio ended up having an entry-level Canon EOS 550D camera with very capable but still attractively priced Canon EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 USM IS lens, all sitting on a Manfrotto 055-B tripod with 3-way head. For the flash lights I chose Elinchrom BXRi range for its great quality/price ratio. It received very positive reviews, it doesn’t cost a fortune and includes accessories that normally would need to be purchased separately — built-in radio triggering and two softboxes. The last obvious item was backdrop system for which I chose three Colorama 1.35m paper backgrounds (white, graphite and black) mounted on an Interfit wall bracket. We managed to recycle some desk tops while clearing the room and sturdy Mac Pro packaging has been converted to trestles. The Mac Pro boxes make very flexible trestles since their sides are of different size, thus allowing putting table top at varying height.
Elinchrom BXRi 250 Flash with 66cm softbox
Workflow
And finally, all the photographic yield would be fed to a fast hard drive on a computer running Aperture, a great photo management and editing software from Apple. All the best shots from each photo session would be uploaded to Aperture, tagged, corrected if necessary and ready to be used on the Web or in print, the latter you should consider doing with us!
Small and large product photos in our purpose built Photo Studio
We can help you with photographing any small and medium objects in our purpose built Photo Studio. And for larger items, like photographing your premises or people, we have a PrintHouse photographer waiting to assist too. Give us a call on 020 8963 0123 or contact us using the form below.
Contact Us
Complete your details and we'll get right back to you.
