Complete Intro to Product Photography
October 16, 2020
Image credit: Revolt
The power of product photography can’t be understated. It often forms people’s first impressions of a brand or product, which can directly influence sales and image.
Whether you’re shooting for clients or for your own business, successful product photography depends on several key elements:
Learn how to master the basics with our complete intro to product photography.
Brief & Shot List
The first step in product photography is determining exactly what you, or your clients, want. This will give you a solid idea of what you’ll need (think: space, equipment, props, models, assistants, time) so you can prepare accordingly. This will not only save time, but also help ensure everyone is happy with the end result.
As a minimum, work out:
- What sort of products need to be photographed
- Where the photos must be taken
- The desired aesthetic (e.g. high-end, edgy, fun, rustic)
- How many images and views of each product are required
- Where the photos will be used – e.g. website, social media, printed catalogue (this will determine image format & dimensions)
Once you’ve confirmed the brief in detail, create a shot list that you can tick off as you shoot, so you don’t miss anything.
Camera Choice
For quality images that do justice to your or your client’s brand, a quality camera is a must. The best camera for product photography will typically have the following features:
- Manual Settings – For best results, you’ll need to be able to manually adjust your aperture value. Shooting in auto mode can make products look significantly brighter or darker than they really are.
- Interchangeable Lenses – As with most styles of photography, lens choice is more critical to good product photography than camera choice is. Interchangeable lenses are higher quality than built-in ones and give you the flexibility to use the right lens for the situation. This is why DSLR and mirrorless cameras are ideal options for product photography.
- Large Sensor – The bigger your camera’s sensor, the more light and detail it can capture. Aside from lens quality, sensor size is often considered the biggest factor in determining image quality.
- High Resolution – The number of megapixels (MP) determines the size of the image, which is important if you wish to crop significantly or print on a large scale (e.g. billboard) without losing quality.
- RAW File Saving – While RAW image files require postprocessing, they retain far more detail than compressed JPEG files. This allows them to be brightened, cropped, and edited in other ways without much loss in quality.
Need more info? Check out our Beginner’s Guide to Digital Cameras.
Lens Choice
The best lens for product photography obviously depends on what you’ll be shooting. Having a mix of lenses will prepare you for a range of scenarios and challenges, but a versatile prime or zoom lens will start you off well.
Tip: Be sure to clean your lenses properly before each shoot!
50mm+ Lens
As a starting point, it’s hard to beat a 50mm equivalent prime lens. Virtually every professional product photographer has a ‘nifty fifty’. The focal length is long enough to prevent distortion but short enough that you needn’t stand too far from your subject. 50mm primes are also compact and have wide maximum apertures – ideal for shooting in low light and for blurring backgrounds.
Standard Zoom Lens
Another great choice for product photography is a standard-length zoom lens, such as a 24-70mm f2.8 or 24-105mm f4 equivalent. While not as compact or bright as a 50mm prime, a quality 24-70mm or 24-105mm zoom lens offers greater versatility plus the ability to quickly adjust your framing.
Wide-angle Lens
Wide-angle focal lengths (35mm or wider) exceed the human eye’s natural visual field. This makes wide angle lenses great for photographing space-consuming subjects (e.g. cars, large furniture) but less ideal for people and smaller products that need to be photographed at closer range, as this can distort details.
Tip: To get the most natural, distortion-free results, back up and zoom in rather than getting close and zooming out.
Macro Lens
For close-up details or small objects (such as jewellery), a macro lens is your best bet. Macro lenses allow you to photograph products from a much closer distance, and can often double as a prime lens for portraits and standard product shots.
For more advice on choosing lenses, check out Lenses 101 and Macro Photography Must-Haves for Beginners.
Top Product Photography Cameras & Lenses from Sony
- Sony a7R IV Mirrorless Camera
- Sony a7III Mirrorless Camera
- Sony a6600 Mirrorless Camera
- Sony FE 24-70mm f2.8 GM Lens
- Sony Planar T FE 50mm f/1.4 ZA Lens
Tripod
A stable tripod is crucial to getting sharp, blur-free shots, especially because product photography often requires narrower aperture settings. (To further minimise potential blur from you pressing the shutter button, a wired shutter release is recommended.)
A tripod also allows you to keep your framing and lighting perfectly consistent – making it much easier to achieve a uniform look across product shots.
- Flexible tripods are great solutions for small products and simple tabletop setups, as they allow you to get quite close to the product. For anything else invest in a freestanding tripod.
- Whichever tripod you choose, make sure it has an adjustable head and can be extended to the height you need to shoot from. An articulating centre column is especially handy for shooting flat lay product photography.
For more info, see Tripods and Monopods: An Essential Guide.
Power and Memory
Product shoots usually involve lots of images and lots of time, so make sure you’ve got plenty of power and file storage. It always pays to have backup batteries and memory cards, just to be on the safe side.
Other Gear
Product photography is all about making things look their best. So it’s really helpful to keep on hand items such as:
- Clamps, Blue-Tak, tape, or fishing line for securing props
- Scissors for cutting tape, fishing line or stray threads
- Cleaning equipment (e.g. iron) for removing dust, smudges, wrinkles and unwanted labels
Remember, minutes spent fixing things during a shoot can save you hours of editing on the computer!
Product Photography Backdrops
Whether simple or sophisticated, your choice of background can play a big part in showcasing the products you’re photographing. There are three main options:
Image credit: Belinda Crossman
Photographed with the Sony a7 III + Sony FE 24-70mm f2.8 GM Lens @ f11, 1/125 sec, ISO 100
Seamless
Created using a roll of paper or vinyl (‘sweep’), a curved wall (‘cyclorama’) or even a light box, seamless backgrounds look clean, professional, and let the product do the talking. Being seamless, these product photography backgrounds make it much easier to capture consistent results across an entire shoot – great for keeping your style coherent and hugely beneficial for post processing.
Choosing a Background Colour
Plain white is one of the best backgrounds for product photography. It’s easy to acquire, stands out against most other colours and helps to even out your lighting. White backgrounds are also easy to work with in post.
However, feel free to experiment with different colours and textures that best promote the product and brand or client. It’s handy to have a few different options to play with.
Image credit: Pixel Bee
Visible Horizon
When both vertical and horizontal planes of the background are visible (e.g. wall and table surface), you get more sense of depth and context. However, care must be taken to keep the horizon consistent across multiple shots.
Image credit: Shannon Tathem
Flat
When it comes to overhead or flat lay shots, flat surfaces with texture or geometry (such as a timber board, large marble tile, or sheets of contrasting coloured paper) easily add subtle interest and context.
Photographed with the Sony a7 III + FE 55mm f1.8 Lens @ f1.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 100
Lifestyle
Photographing products in a relevant setting, perhaps with a model, provides scale and context. This is a great way to showcase a product’s features and benefits and demonstrate it in use. Just bear in mind that the more variables you introduce, the more complex the shoot will be.
Image credit: Alexander Dummer
Lighting for Product Photography
Good lighting is crucial to good product photography. It’s one of the most important factors in making products look appealing and making your brand or client look professional.
Note: Not all lighting works for every type of product. For example, highly reflective surfaces like glass and metal require a different approach. Use these steps as a starting guide.
Natural Light
Natural light is often beautiful, but also highly subject to change. For this reason it’s best for product shoots that don’t need to be replicated or look uniform, such as lifestyle shots.
Large windows are great indoor sources of natural light. To keep the lighting soft and even, place your product close to the window and cover the window with a diffuser of some sort.
If you’re shooting outdoors, try doing so on an overcast day, sticking to open shade or softening the harshness of direct sunlight with a diffuser. This will give you soft, even light that’s flattering for most subjects.
Artificial Light
Unlike natural light, artificial lights (such as speedlights, strobes or continuous LED) mounted on light stands can be precisely controlled and used at any time or place. This makes it much easier to create a consistent look between shots – ideal if you’re shooting over several hours or days or need to capture similar photos of new products in future.
Lighting modifiers allow you to shape, soften or concentrate your light. Softboxes and bounce or shoot-through umbrellas are some of the most useful for product photography as they produce soft, even lighting.
Essentially a backdrop, light modifier and reflector combined, a light box or light tent is another great option for small product photography. It provides soft light and a virtually shadow-free backdrop suitable for catalogue-style images.
Soft vs Hard Light
The quality of your light—that is, how soft or defined its shadows are—has a big impact on the look and feel of product photography.
Image credit: Judith Zimmerman
Soft light creates even lighting with subtle shadows, and is a lot more forgiving and flattering on most subjects.
To achieve soft light, place your subject close to a diffused light source (e.g. softbox, veiled window, overcast sky).
Hard light is trickier to deal with as it creates strong highlights and shadows. However, when used with care and skill, hard light can create striking results.
Hard light tends to look best when the shadows fall cleanly – i.e. without overlapping other shadows or key details.
To get hard light, try using direct sunlight or a flash fitted with a grid. Placing the light further from your subject will sharpen the shadow edges.
Image credit: Chris Ralston
Suggested Product Photography Lighting Setups
There are infinite ways in which to set up lighting, but here’s a few effective options to get you started:
Side Lighting
Image credit: Belinda Crossman
Photographed with the Sony a7 III + FE 50mm f2.8 Macro Lens @ f11, 1/125 sec, ISO 100
Side lighting is a great option for eye-level and flat lay photography setups. Unlike frontal lighting, which tends to make subjects look flat, side lighting works well for product photography because it helps create dimension.
Just make sure that any shadows don’t obscure significant details or interfere with other products in the shot. If this is the case, try brightening shadows with a reflector (as in below left diagram). You could also try moving the light slightly higher or towards the front of the subject (at about a 45° angle – see below right diagram).
Back Lighting
Image Credit: Sony
Photographed with the Sony RX1R II @ f11, 1/125 sec, ISO 100
Back lighting is a good product photography lighting option when you photograph from a high or overhead angle, such as for flat lays.
Back lighting works especially well for food photography. Compared to side lighting, it creates stronger highlights and shadows that still look natural. This emphasises texture and dimension, making food look fresh and succulent.
Lighting for Glass & Transparent Objects
The trick to photographing clear products, such as glassware, is to make them look transparent. To do this, you need to highlight the subject’s outline rather than its surface.
Bright Field Lighting
Image credit: Margarita Zueva
One way to do this is with a technique known as bright field lighting. This involves lighting the subject from behind through a white or pale diffuser that’s big enough to fill the entire image. Bright field lighting makes all but the edges of clear subjects invisible. Black reflectors or bounce boards can be held on either side of the subject to further define the edges.
Dark Field Lighting
Image credit: Luke Besley
The other technique is dark field lighting, which is basically the opposite of bright field lighting. This involves using a black or dark background and lighting the subject from side on. Softboxes are ideal for this because they soften the light without spreading it. For best results, avoid spilling light onto the background.
Side Lighting
Image credit: Belinda Crossman
Photographed with the Sony a7 III + FE 24-70mm f2.8 GM Lens @ f11, 1/125 sec, ISO 100
To photograph clear products with labels or other surface detail, side lighting may be a better option.
Tip: As you light a product, pay attention to the highlights and shadows; they should flatter the subject and not distract. Reposition the light (or product) accordingly. Use a second ‘fill’ light or reflector to brighten any areas that are too dark.
Tip: It’s a good idea to photograph or draw your product photography lighting setup so you can replicate it if needed.
Photographed with the Sony a7 III + FE 24-70mm f2.8 GM Lens @ f2.8, 1/250 sec, ISO 320
Styling
Once happy with your background and lighting, you or your stylist can fine-tune any product styling.
Composition
Sometimes all you need is a simple, centred shot of a product. This is easy to achieve and replicate. But using the Rule of Thirds, diagonals (or leading lines), product groupings, and patterns are easy ways to add interest and draw customers’ attention.
Props
When it comes to props, less is usually more. They should play a supporting role, suggesting context without stealing the show from the product itself. Choose props that are appropriate for the story you’re trying to tell.
Mind the Details
Impressions count, and so do details. Remove tags or labels, clean up smudges, smooth or iron out wrinkles, and remove dust or other particles (which will only look more obvious in high resolution). This will make a big difference to your final images and save you a heap of editing time.
Camera Settings
With all your preparations sorted, it’s time to start shooting.
Image Format
As mentioned earlier, RAW files provide the most leeway for editing. If your camera doesn’t support RAW capture, set the image format to the largest, finest JPEG setting available.
Aspect Ratio
Select the aspect ratio—4:6, 1:1 (square), or other—appropriate for your images’ final use. If you need final shots in multiple aspect ratios, you may find it easier to shoot all images with the same aspect ratio but frame generously. This makes it possible to crop square shots later, for example.
Flash & Stabilisation Off
Ensure your camera’s on-camera flash is turned off. If you’re using a tripod, you should also turn off in-camera or in-lens image stabilisation.
Spot Metering & Focus
To ensure your image is well exposed and sharpest where it should be, set your metering and focus modes to ‘Spot’. Then line up your focus point with the product’s most important detail.
Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO
Exposure can have a huge impact on the appearance of your products. Overexposure makes a black item look grey; underexposure does the same to a white item. That’s why it’s important to set your camera to Manual (M) or Aperture Priority (AV) mode, so you can control the result.
Aperture
To get all or most of the product in focus, select a narrower aperture (f8-16). This is especially important for macro shots.
For shallow depth of field (which can look effective in lifestyle products shots), try a wider aperture – f4 or wider.
ISO
Ideally, set your ISO to your camera’s native setting (usually 100 or 160, depending on make and model). This will minimise digital noise and deliver the cleanest, clearest image quality possible.
Shutter Speed
If using off-camera flash, set your shutter speed to 1/125 sec.
If using natural or continuous light and a narrower aperture, you’ll likely need a slow shutter speed. (In this case, a tripod is essential.) If you prefer to handhold your camera, keep your shutter speed high to minimise blur from camera shake. Set it to 1/your lens’ focal length or 1/125 sec, whichever is faster, and raise your ISO setting accordingly.
White Balance
Accurate colours are vital in product photography. To make sure the products you photograph represent reality, take a custom white balance reading using a grey card and properly calibrate your computer before editing.
For more on white balance, read How to Solve 12 of the Most Common Lighting Issues in Photography.
Image credit: STIL
Viewpoint & Framing
Ideally a product should be photographed from all relevant angles, with a close-up or two to highlight key elements. These are some of the most popular views:
- Eye Level – Shows the front, back or side profile of the product
- High Angle – Taken in front from a slight angle above, this helps show the overall form of a product
- Low Angle – Also known as the ‘hero’ angle, this makes products appear more grand or impressive
- Overhead – This is ideal for products that look interesting from above or as part of a flat lay.
- Three-quarter Angle – Similar to high angle, but taken from a position of about 45° to the product, this works well for photographing multiple items or components
Tip: It’s always better to include some extra breathing room in each shot in case you need to crop later.
Image credit: Vanilla Bear Films
Test & Review
Take a few test shots and review them at 100% zoom. Is everything in focus that needs to be?
Tip: To ensure various elements in the foreground and background are sharp, you may need to focus stack.
Is each image properly exposed? (Ideally nothing, apart from the background, should appear devoid of detail – i.e. pure white or black.) Adjust your settings if required.
Tip: To ensure both dark and bright elements are properly lit, you may need to adjust your lighting or photograph bracketed exposures.
Once you’ve photographed everything on your shot list, feel free to try some different camera angles, exposures or compositions. Sometimes it’s the unplanned shots that work out the best!
Want more tips for product photography?
Just ask one of our staff photographers.