New Member – Learning Product Photography and Looking for Lighting Advice

Phil Carson

New Member
Hi folks,

I figured it was time to stop lurking and actually introduce myself. My name is Phil and I’ve been getting more serious about photography lately and right now I’m mainly focusing on product photography.

Most of what I’m interested in working on is small tabletop stuff. Things like guitar effects pedals, small kitchen products, various types of packaged items, that sort of thing. I’m trying to get to the point where I can consistently shoot clean commercial quality product photos. Eventually I want to start learning food photography as well.

I’m still very much in the learning phase and trying to really understand the fundamentals. Exposure, depth of field, lighting, reflections, all the things that make product shots look clean instead of amateur.

My current gear setup is:

Camera: Nikon D5300
Nikon 40mm Micro-Nikkor f/2.8
Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro
Nikon 18-55 kit lens

Most of my shooting right now is tripod-based tabletop setups while I experiment with lighting and camera settings.

Speaking of lighting, that’s probably the area I’m trying to improve the most right now. If anyone here has recommendations for solid but reasonably affordable lighting for product photography, I’d really love to hear what’s worked for you. Right now I’m using some cheap lighting that’s pretty amateurish that I got from Amazon.

So I’m curious - If you were starting over today and wanted a good but inexpensive lighting setup, what would you buy first?

Anyway, glad to be here and looking forward to learning from the community.

Phil
 
Probably the best lighting for your type of photography is diffuse. Hold some skrim in front of the light or make yourself a tent with thin white material and light through iton either side at 45º. I would also stick to the 105 lens for best perspective. You should get something like the attached - the light on the right was placed closer to give a hint of modelling.
 

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welcome to the forum. i shoot action figures rather than product photography, but it should be similar. i like godox's led light panels and ulanzi's cube lights for unobtrusive backlighting, but it depends on what size objects you need to light. both are available on amazon. ulanzi's handheld smoke machine is great at giving you some atmosphere if you need it.

52926514438_329d3b568d_o.jpg
 
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