How to Take Good Product Pictures

Maybe that is not necessarily a graphic designer’s job to take product pictures. There are professional photographers doing this job. However, I find knowing some basic product photo taking skills is very useful for our work as well. Lately, I have been getting awful product pictures from my client and asked to make them posters or store decals. He wouldn’t want to or couldn’t find a professional product photographer to do this job. So, instead of spending hours in Photoshop to fix the pictures, I am trying to learn about how to take the pictures myself to make my work easier from the beginning.

I learned some product photography skills from some practice of one of my projects last year. I was doing a travel product kit branding and made the physical product out. We were required to take pictures of our products and put them into the brand book as the final deliverable. Our instructor gave us some ideas about how to take the pictures. She suggested we could use the natural sunlight as the light sources and set up the surroundings related to the products or just use some cardboard paper as the background to take the pictures. So, I got some cardboard paper and started my experiment outside of the studio in one afternoon. It was not easy. The wind always blew the cardboard paper away; The sunlight was changing too quick for me, a newbie photographer; I had no idea how to arrange the products; The hardest part was to find the right angle to take the picture so that I wouldn’t get unwanted shadow on the products and also have a good picture composition. I spent the whole afternoon trying, and under the help of a classmate, I started to know some basic tips and got some good pictures for my portfolio. See below.

But now, since I am going to take the pictures for a client, I would want to learn more to do better. So, I started looking for some articles online. And I would like to share some tips that I found about how to take good product pictures.

1. Don’t Be Afraid to Use Your Smartphone Camera

newer smartphones such as the iPhone 7, Google Pixel, and Samsung Galaxy S4 boast 12MP and 13MP lenses along with numerous “temperature” settings to optimize your shots for the different types of light you might shoot in.

2. Shoot From a Tripod for Photo Consistency

Don’t prop your phone against something sturdy to aim your lens toward the subject. It’s just too easy for this makeshift setup to slide around during the shoot and cause inconsistencies in your photos’ appearance. If you rest your camera on, say, a stack of books, just be sure this arrangement doesn’t change over the course of the shoot.

There’s no harm in holding your camera yourself when shooting just a few product photos for your ecommerce website. But as your business grows, and you take more photos of more products, it can be difficult to standardize the product’s orientation in each photo when shooting handheld. To ensure consistency across your products, you’ll need a tripod.

3. Natural Light vs. Artificial Light: Choose One

A single lighting setup might not work for every single product — a lighting arrangement that works for some products might weaken the appearance of others. There are two types of light you can choose as your main light source:

Natural Light

Natural light refers to sunlight — simple as that. It’s also known as “soft light” because the sun casts a larger, softer range of light than, say, a lamp shining directly on the product. Ecommerce product shots thrive in natural light if:

• The product is shot outside or meant to be used outside.
• The product is used by, worn on, or shot with a person (people tend to look better in natural light).
• You’re trying to emphasize the product’s surroundings, rather than specific attributes of the product.

Artificial Light

Artificial light includes candles, fire, and more commonly, light bulbs. It’s also referred to as “hard light” because it produces a smaller but more focused light surface. This type of light caters to products with physical details that need to be highlighted to impress an online shopper.

As a general rule, you should stick to just one type of light per photo — natural or artificial. Adding natural light to an artificially lit photo can soften a product that’s meant to look sharp, and adding artificial light to a naturally lit photo can sharpen a product that’s meant to look soft. You don’t want to get in your own way.

4. Fill or Bounce Your Light to Soften Shadows

Whether you use natural light or artificial light, you’ll need to lessen the shadows any potential hard light casts on the opposite end of a product. There are three ways to do this:

Fill Light

Include another, less-intense light source to supplement your main light. This additional light is called your fill light, and is used as a counterbalance to soften the natural shadow your main light produces behind an object. To do this, place your fill light opposite your main light so your product sits between both light sources.

Flashbulb Bounce Card

A bounce card, or reflector card, is a small card that “reflects” or “bounces” the main light back onto the surface beneath your product to reduce shadows.

Some bounce cards attach to the flashbulb of a professional camera lens to diffuse the light from the camera’s flash. This card splashes a softer light onto the subject from above your set — rather than straight at it — so you don’t have long shadows trail behind the object you’re shooting.

Standalone Bounce Card

If you’re shooting from a smartphone, a flashbulb bounce card isn’t an option, since you don’t have a physical flash you can attach it to. Instead, make your own standalone bounce card positioned opposite your main light source. For beginners to product photography, this bounce card can effectively replace your fill light, which counters the hard light from the camera flash or lamp that’s facing toward the front of your product.

5. Use a Sweep or Portrait Mode to Emphasize the Product

There isn’t one right way to position your product, lights, and bounce cards — they can change dramatically depending on your background. But don’t choose a background based on what’s easiest to create. Backgrounds should resemble how you want your buyers to perceive your product when viewing it online.

Consider first whether you’d like a white background or a more dynamic, real-world background. There’s an easy way to achieve each one.

White Background: Sweep

For white backgrounds, it’s not as simple as setting up a table against white drywall. Even smartphone cameras can pick up little blemishes on a white wall that you wouldn’t notice with the naked eye. To capture a perfect white background with no corners or blemishes, use a sweep.

A sweep is a large bendable sheet of paper, whose bottom acts as the surface beneath your product and then curves up into a white wall behind the product. On camera, the sweep’s curve is invisible, emphasizing key product details and allowing the item to own all of a website visitor’s attention.

Real-World Background: Portrait Mode

Dynamic, real-world backgrounds are very appealing when shooting products that have a specific use or are being modeled by a person — as you saw in the picture of the briefcase earlier in this guide. But, it’s easy for a real-world background to steal the focus of the photo, making it unclear which item in the photo you’re actually selling.

Give your product depth and emphasis with portrait mode, a picture setting on most professional cameras and also available on many new smartphones. This setting blurs the background so the context of the product is clear but not competing against the product itself.

6. Shoot a Variety of Images

If you’re shooting clothing, for instance, capture the garment of clothing alone — that is, spread out on a white surface — as well as on a mannequin whose color contrasts the color of the product. Then, for additional photos, have the clothing modeled on a person, allowing you to take pictures of the product from the person’s different poses and angles.

Don’t feel obligated to invest in every tip and piece of equipment at once. Apply these product photography tips gradually to see what makes your store look the most presentable, and change your approach as your photography chops get better.