light required for product photography

[abhishek gupta]

i have bought a tent for product photography but i dont know how much light i

need, do i need strobes or continous lighting.also want to know whats the

suitable white balance for product phot.....

[leicaglow]

You can use either strobes or continuous. If using digital, you can adjust the white balance on the camera usually. 5500 degrees Kelvin is considered daylight->flash range, and some expensive lighting allows you to fine tune the color balance. Cheaper lighting doesn't allow this and it's easier to do it in-camera or in Photoshop. Also, there's a chart showing the equivalent Kelvin temp to English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_balance

[primeimages]

I never use tents unless the item I'm shooting is highly reflective. I simply have 2 sets of continuous lights (1000 watts each) on softboxes. Since I always shoot raw, white balance is the least of my worries though its always on incandescent setting. Everything is fine tuned on PS down to the exact color of the item you're shooting.

 

I did consider using strobes for tabletop photography. Then again, if you're shooting numerous items a day, nothing beats using hot lights. The only thing about those hot lights are your shutter speed. Since you'll be working on a much slower speed (1/4 - 1/10 second), you'll definitely need a sturdy tripod and a remote shutter release.

[rtwildlife]

The trick is not that difficult. Use an incident light meter for the correct lighting values at the spot you want you subject product to stand. If you don't own such a device, use you're camera's metering system, but then you should point at a graycard, placed on your product's spot.

This works both for Flash and for continuous light systems.

After getting your product metering right, you should tune your whitebalance. This is very easy: just take a picture with the learned lighting values, of your graycard, placed on the spot where you want your products to be.

Always should in RAW. After you've taken your pictures, correct the whitebalance in your photoshoplike program from your graycard photo.

This is, in my opinion, an easy and effective method.

regards.