Product photography is experiencing a renaissance — what was once a niche dominated by large brands has now become an essential tool for promotion on social media and marketplaces. Local manufacturers and self-employed artisans crafting brooches, jewelry, or ceramic plates at home need to showcase their products beautifully, making potential buyers fall in love with the item and purchase it.
Here’s the equipment you’ll need for product photography and how to properly set up your camera for it.
Lighting for Product Photography
Unlike the fashion segment, where brands engage with the audience and sell feelings, product photography focuses on showcasing the product in the most attractive, clear, and appealing way. For this type of photography, the highest image quality and sharpness are crucial. That’s why product photographers use strobe lighting. It’s more affordable and powerful than continuous lighting, freezes motion in the frame, and maintains sharpness. Strobe lighting reduces the demands on your lens and camera, allowing you to save on other gear.
The minimum power required for product photography lighting is 400 joules. Be sure to check this specification when purchasing strobe lighting to avoid disappointment. If you’re thinking ahead, an optimal choice for the future would be a strobe light with 600 joules of power.
Lens for Product Photography
The need for perfect advertising quality and detail is emphasized here as well. Ideally, for product photography, you should use a prime telephoto lens with a high aperture. Lenses with focal lengths of 70mm, 85mm, or 100mm are suitable. You can go higher, but that would require a larger studio or space where you can comfortably move far enough away from the product setup. Zoom lenses are also an option, but prime lenses generally outperform zoom lenses in sharpness.
Avoid wide-angle lenses — they distort perspective and stretch the edges of the frame. You’ll spend more time fixing this in post-processing, and composing the shot will be more challenging.
Camera Settings for Product Photography
- RAW format or RAW + JPEG if you’re sending the photos to a client for selection.
- ISO up to 400.
- Closed aperture — the higher, the better. For example, f/8 or f/16.
- Shutter speed as fast as the strobe light allows. Typically, this is between 1/125 and 1/160.
- Enable Live View mode, which shows the frame on the display rather than through the viewfinder. This makes it easier to compose the shot.
- Manual focus to ensure you’re focusing exactly where you need, not where the autofocus decides.
Product Photography: Necessary Equipment and Tips
To achieve perfectly sharp photos, you need to close the aperture and use focus stacking.
A tripod is essential for product photography. It allows you to do focus stacking, work calmly on the composition, and know the exact boundaries of your frame.
A laptop is also necessary. Product photography is shot directly onto a laptop to immediately assess quality, composition issues, sharpness, and potential light overexposures that need correction. Your perfect solution is a gaming laptop. But if you are a newbie, then a cheaper model that provides access to sites like an online casino or Netflix and allows you to edit simple photos will be enough.
Location for Product Photography
Product photographers typically set up a home studio for their shoots or rent a space to create their photography studio.
Diffusers and Light Modifiers
Frost frames and other diffusion materials are essential. These are white translucent materials through which light is directed onto the product. They create smooth, matte highlights on the items, soften the light, and create a glowing background for high-key images.
Stripboxes, softboxes, and reflectors are necessary light attachments. You should have two stripboxes to create even highlights on both sides and emphasize the shape of the product. A softbox is needed for the softest diffused light. A reflector produces a hard, directed light.