360 Product Photography

Let me preface my remarks by admitting I know nothing about the Windows operating system. And I have never wanted to merge panoramic photos.

But I have heard and read about it. The PhotoShop software will do the merging. And a company in California called Really Right Stuff makes a tripod head used for the same purpose. They have a website, but are considered top of the line tripod bullhead makers and thus expensive.

This is rather specialized equipment.

How big are the products?

If they're small, get a "Lazy Susan". Put the product in the very centre & your camera on a tripod pointing very slightly down on the object. Then take a shot, spin the platter a little, take another shot, spin, shoot, etc.

That should give you photographs of the item from every angle.

As for software, anything that can make an animated GIF out of a series of shots should do the trick.

Hope that helps.

Following up on the Lazy Susan recommendation, I remembered a video that Mark Wallace posted a couple years ago and dug up the link:

http://youtu.be/ItQtxMcRYXY?t=22m52s

Fast-forward to around 22:50 and you'll see how he uses a Lazy Susan to do a 360 degree product video. Obviously, you can adapt this for photos.

For photos, you can do this on the cheap. All you need is a Lazy Susan which you can make yourself, or even adapt an old turntable / record player. Just get a cheap, stable table for the product, and place it far away from a white (or fairly white) wall. Then just two or three light your product. Definitely one light to blow out the background if you want to go full white. Then a key light and possibly a rim light.

Video will be a bit more difficult since you need figure out how to get continuous lights balanced correctly (and with enough strength) for the video. You can shoot high ISO video, but then that can get pretty hairy at ISO 800 and above, particularly on APS-C.

Here is a great article from Webrotate 360 showing how to build a manual turntable: http://www.webrotate360.com/Blog/post/360-Product-Photography-Equipment-Turntable.aspx

There are also ones that can be purchased for ~$35 that do a great job: http://www.studiotent.com/360turntable_photo_turntable_3d_product_photography_object

Last, you mention about a software, you might want to take a look at this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6jOVyxtsqs

As an experienced 360 product photographer, I will tell you lighting is the most important. A boom light from the top down has been very beneficial to my efforts when shooting 360 product photography. In addition, you will need a lazy susan - something that will make it easy to rotate the product at even intervals over a 360 rotation. Probably a manual lazy susan will be best if you are trying to keep this in budget. Last, you will need to consider a software program that will compose a set of JPG images into a 360 product view. There are many different options available. You might want to consider Magic Toolbox, Shutter Stream 360 Product Photography Software (this also has camera control features for automating picture taking) or the web rotate 360 software.

Shoot a pano and stitch it in LR or PS. There are world of videos and web pages on how to do it.