Product Photography. Best practices for this style?

The apple method

TheGenerous said:

I've seen this style of photography for print and typography related material. I wonder if there is a name for it, I'd like to research best practices for it. My goal is to be able to reproduce some of these shots with some well-designed stuff I got.

Please let me know what keywords could I be searching for. Thank you.

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The author of these shots is a quite busy person and unfortunately he announced not replying to questions.

Click to expand...

It's pretty straight forward. You'll need a white surface, two lights on either side and soft boxes to diffuse, and a tripod with a swinging center column so that you can hang the camera directly over the product. You can pick up a very basic product photography kit that includes everything you need (except for the tripod) for very cheap.

Things to keep in mind while photographing would be to use a regular or slightly telephoto lens to make sure the products are not warped by any lens distortion. Also, you may want to experiment with your exposure to keep that white background bright and crisp. Start with the regular metered exposure then try over exposing by one of two stops. You can also try doing bracket exposures (1 stop under, 1 correct, 1 stop over) and merging them together in Photoshop. Similar to HDR, but not so heavy handed and terrible looking Hope this helps!

Search the Internet for "light box" or "light tent" that will give you an idea where to start.

I use a small light box for my product photography (I sell small items, I.e body jewellery) and the results from a basic light box, reasonable camera and tripod are very good.

It's all about lighting and depth of field.

It's all about lighting and depth of field.

Check out http://www.luminous-landscape.com/index.shtml and http://strobist.blogspot.com/ for hints and guidance.

Have a good macro lens too. I have couple and use them with either fixed or natural lighting or a twin tube macro light (http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consu...peedlite_flash_lineup/macro_twin_lite_mt_24ex)

I don't bother with light boxes. I simply use a couple lights with modifiers (e.g. softbox, umbrellas or even a beauty dish).

Example: http://www.ocabj.net/canon-bg-e11-battery-grip-review/