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Studio Lighting Tip: Setting up Home Studio for Product Photography

One of the most financially rewarding fields for any photographer is shooting product photos. Product photography may seem easy. Take for example, a bottle of wine. It’s small, attractive-looking and doesn’t move about too much. All you need to do is shine a couple of lights on it, point the camera and shoot.

But what’s that reflection? Looking closely, you can see yourself, the camera and the entire studio reflected in the shiny surface of the bottle. Perhaps it’s not so easy after all.


The key to successful commercial photography is controlling lighting and reflections, and that’s a lot more complicated than just positioning a few lights in a studio. There is a bewildering array of specialized equipment available to commercial photographers for shooting product pictures. The next time you look at beautifully lit wine bottle in an advertisement, try to figure out exactly where the lights were positioned. If you can’t work it out then the photographer has done the job properly.

Setting up Home Studio for Product Photography: Choosing the right lights

The lighting you choose for a product shot is dependent upon the purpose of the image., but one factor is crucial – accurate color reproduction. Whatever type of lighting you go for, stick with one type. Don’t attempt to mix daylight with tungsten or halogen with fluorescent, or any combination of above.

Different types of light are better suited to different subjects. For extreme close-up work, fluorescent lights are a good choice because they don’t generate much heat. For larger items, powerful photofloods are ideal. They provide a wide coverage with good range and control, and setting up complex lighting systems is a lot easier because you can see the results of any changes as they are made. Many professional commercial photographers prefer photofloods to flash system for this reason.

The other advantage is that you don’t need a flash sync connection, a feature lacking on many digital cameras. However, it’s a good idea to test your camera’s performance using longer shutter speeds because some digital sensor are prone to noise at longer exposures.

Flash systems are an ideal choice in smaller or poorly ventilated studios where the heat generated by photofloods quickly becomes uncomfortable. Contrary to popular belief, there is no problem using a conventional studio flash system with a digital camera as long as the model has a connector to trigger the illumination.

Setting up Home Studio for Product Photography: Your own studio at home

Bowen Table Top Studio

Digital photography has opened up creative imaging to a much wider audience, ant the versatility of modern digital cameras makes it easier for less experienced photographers to take top-quality photos.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 15th, 2005 at 11:08 am and is filed under Photography Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.