Free Download: Shooting Basics for Product Photography

Master product photography with our free guide on shooting basics. Elevate your photos today!

This free download has the information you need to satisfy your clients as you boast about your newly acquired knowledge to them... and hopefully get some work done, too!

Let's go over some of this valuable information:

Can You Even See What You Are Doing?

A nice trick to start is connecting your camera to a computer or laptop to display and save the images that you are capturing as you're photographing them. Catch every detail in the spot, and reduce the amount of time you spend taking extra shots to get to the final one.

This method might also help your clients feel confident in what you're producing and gives them a chance to share necessary feedback. Or unnecessary feedback...! In this case you can always shut the computer off and give them a very complicated reason with a lot of technical jargon for why it's better not seeing what you are doing at the moment. And if that fails, as a last resort, tell them you got hacked! Who can argue with that? This tip has the bonus of making you look like a cool CIA agent.

Shaky Hands?

Don't be cheap, buy a tripod! Having your camera set up in the position you plan to photograph your scene gives you the freedom to make styling changes between shots as you perfect your composition.

The download is near! But, instead of giving it away, all at once, let me boast some more about my newly acquired knowledge.

Let's Get Technical

Depending on your equipment, you may want to shoot with either manual or auto focus. If you’re shooting handheld and you are not connected to your laptop, auto-focus will be the best option to ensure that your images stay sharp.

Bring Light Into The Scene

There are many ways to light a set but the most common are hard lighting (strobes or direct sunlight) and soft lighting (softbox or open shade). Hard lighting creates hard-edged shadows which can give you a dramatic look. Maybe McDonalds wants their new burger to look like it's dealing with past trauma... With soft lighting you can achieve natural and diffused illumination for your images. A way to get this look is using white cards (a piece of foam core board) to help bounce and reflect light back into your scene.

And finally you need your camera to capture this light somehow. So, if you didn't know already, ISO is the sensitivity of light that your camera’s sensor has. A low ISO will allow less light in the image whilst a high ISO will let more light to get through and will produce more noise/grain in the image. Keeping your ISO as low as possible when working with strobes is essential, since your strobes are probably already producing a large amount of light.

And here is the download you were waiting for! Click on it, I dare you! Show no remorse for the mere parafrasist, that I am! The download has all you need and way more than I can offer. This article is only a means to an end... Ignore my tears of impotence and click down below:

Anyways, even though my individual article ends here, Domestika keeps going! We have over 2000 courses for you. And since you've kept reading after the download I will spill the beans: the downloadable is actually a sneak peak of what our introductory course in product photography by Weekend Creative has to offer!

Your artistic journey awaits us:

- More video and photography courses
- More on product photography lighting Article by Angel Jiménez de Luis