need suggestion on equipment to purchase for white background product photography

[jae_ahn]

<p>i currently have a home made box set up. the background is white seamless paper purchased from Wolf Camera. the camera i'm using is a Nikon D5000. the lights are where i think my problem is. i've got 6 desk lamps. The kind that has a clamp on one end. the bulbs in each one are 120v 5000k 60hz 200ma. <br>

the lamps are all clamped on the exterior of the box pointed inward. 2 are straight at the background, 2 are background and product, and the other 2 are pointed at the product from either side but still toward the background. as you can imagine, there are a lot of shadows because none of these lamps are diffused. i'm wanting to change up my current set up and want to start with purchasing the correct lighting equipment. i've done a lot of searching around to figure out i need some sort of light pointed at the background in order to blow it out and make it white. my goal is to have a product sitting in front of the background, and take a picture so there will be virtually no photoshop work needed. i'll be needing to take anywhere from 25-100 pictures of products a day. <br>

i'm looking at a budget of less than $2000 if possible. since i have little knowledge of lighting equipment, i don't know what brand to purchase, and what model to purchase. i've read a lot about softboxes, umbrellas, monolites, speedlights, and etc. but don't know which to get and what model/type to purchase. this may be difficult to do, but i just want 2-3 lights to purchase to make my background white. for example, go to this website and look into puchasing xyz, model 123, 1000 watt. most of the time i see people say, any lights will do, and i get a brand name like alien bees, and if i go to their website, i see everything there and i'm back where i started not knowing what to get.<br>

i'm also not as familiar with the settings on the D5000 since it's only a month or 2 old. i'm hoping after i get the right lighting, i'll be able to play with the settings and get what i'm looking for. but i'm already plenty confused with all this talk of "f stops" and such. i would appreciate any help. i just want to order some decent lights and get my background white with minimal shadows on my product. thank you.</p>

[cabbiinc]

<p>Show us an example of your current setup with a typically sized product. You may not need to purchase anything at all.</p>

[hal_b]

<p>Maybe you should think of diffusing your current hot-lamps first. If you put some white sheets in front of the lamps, you'll get a diffuse look really quick. This might save you alot of trouble. I suggest this, because there's alot of learn to get into flash product photography. Any practice you've had with your hot lamps will be nullified if you change systems, and the end result will not necessarily be better quality over what you could get with a DIY setup of some bed sheets (there are paper materials that actually work better than bed sheets, too).</p>

<p>One more thing to consider: if you switch to flash lights, you'll need to be able to sync all the flashes. So now you either need a system of adapters and sync cords, or a wireless radio popper type setup.</p>

<p>I hate to say it, but "any lights will do". Specifically, you're looking for cheap monolights. Alien Bees is still considered a "budget" brand. You would want complete "monolight kits" including a stand, monolight, and reflector for each kit. Maybe something like this Westcott 3 light kit, which comes with 3 150ws lights and 2 umbrellas:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.mpex.com/browse.cfm/4,9408.html">http://www.mpex.com/browse.cfm/4,9408.html</a></p>

[nathan_meador]

<p>For product lighting, I do not think you'd need anything very powerful. I know you looked at the alienbees site, did you see their 'packages' <a href="http://www.alienbees.com/digi.html">http://www.alienbees.com/digi.html</a>; something along this line using their B400's should give you all the power you'd need for indoor product work. Maybe add a softbox, snoot and grids and you should be pretty well set. There are several other brands to pick from that would do the job well, shop around.</p>

[cabbiinc]

<blockquote>

<p>2 are straight at the background, 2 are background and product, and the other 2 are pointed at the product from either side but still toward the background.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Ok, lets assume that these lights are exactly the same power and set at exactly the same distance from the subject and background. You're not lighting the background enough. To increase your exposure by a stop you need to double the light. Your equalizing it. Try taking the two that are on both the background and product and just add to the background. 2 lights on the subject, 4 lights on the background will give you one stop over on the background (which still may not be enough).</p>

<p>Try this:</p>

<ol>

<li>Turn the lights on your background, turn them on. If you're using 4 lights turn all 4 on.</li>

<li>Set your camera to shutter priority, low ISO. Set the shutter speed to 1/60th of a second.</li>

<li>Take a reading (press the shutter button half way). If the display blinks a number at you adjust the shutter speed until they're solidly lit. Assuming that you're using a standard kit lens you'll want f/8 or smaller (higher number). Write down the aperture. </li>

<li>Now turn the lights off for the background and turn on lights for your product (put something there to meter off of, gray would be great as that's what color digital cameras try to meter for). Using the same shutter speed and settings meter your product. Assuming that you achieved f/8 you'll want f/5.6 or better yet f/4. Move your lights closer and further away to achieve this. Write down the aperture.</li>

<li>Now that you've got some numbers turn on all the lights, set your camera to M mode, shutter speed to 1/6oth, aperture to what the subject you had metered, and ISO to what you had used.</li>

<li>Take a picture.</li>

</ol>

<p>This will get you started. Try not getting the background too much brighter than your subject. You'll want to set your display to blink at you when things are overexposed, and the background won't need to be fully blinking. Realistically you're looking for the background aperture's number to be double or more than the subjects aperture.<br>

Examples:<br>

subject is f/4 and background is f/8 = set the camera to f/4.<br>

subject is f/5.6 and background is f/5.6 = background won't blow out (white out).<br>

subject is f/4 and background is f/22 = set camera to f/4 and background will be so bright that you'll get hazy looking pics, try turning the lights down on the background to get closer to f/11 or f/8.</p>

<p>Read your manual, learn how to set aperture, shutter speed, and ISO on your camera. Once you have it set and you don't move your lights it won't change. No automatic camera settings to try to think for you (and possibly mess it up because it's black or white or really reflective or....).</p>

<p>If you want to get creative (less flat lighting) move one of the subjects lights back a bit. You'll get less light on that side and it will look less flat. Positioning the lights from above looks more natural as well unless you're going for that raising from hell look.</p>

[JAPster]

<p>Recently I did a little 'home grown' product photography (men's wrist-watches). I needed some h-q photos in case I wanted to sell them. But I had little $ for expensive lights. So i got a little creative and just used what i had.</p>

<p>I placed a 3ft x 2ft old sewing machine table about 1ft in front of a large LR window. This window let in plenty of natural sunlight from say 9am to 5pm. I wanted soft diffused light, not harsh direct light, so I taped a large square panel of white ripstop nylon over the whole window. White ripstop nylon is a good diffuser material and is available at any good fabric shop. Costs a couple $ per YD. The nylon diffused the natural sunlight pretty good, and resulting diffused sunlight fell across my table just right.</p>

<p>I covered the old wooden table with a nice, richly textured pillow-case cover to get a nice backdrop, something that would look a little classy. The watches, each in turn, were fitted around a jewler's white watch-pillow, and that was placed in the exact center of the pillow case. The watch was canted upwards about 40 deg to provide a good profile for the AF to lock in on.</p>

<p>I did not want any shadows and even more, as little glare as possible. So I used some home-made DIY matte-finish white reflectors I had made last year. I used some rolling tubular steel frames (like the kind that holds old cloths at a thrift store) to hold the reflector boards vertically. One frame was positioned to the immediate left of the wooden table, and the other to the right. The white reflectors were made from white posterboard purchased from an office supply store. They were hung vertically so they were parallel to the table (perpindicular to the living room window). I was hoping they would catch any light and bounce it back into the sides of the subject and provide fill light.</p>

<p>I used a Panasonic Lumix FZ8 7mp bridge camera to take the shots. I wanted the sharpest possible pics so i mounted the camera on a tripod so it was positioned about 1FT to right side and 20IN higher than the table surface. I experimented with the Tele-zoom setting till I found the exact point where I could get the best magnification on the watch w/o violating the zoom's 'minimum focus' point.</p>

<p>I also wanted to get plenty of frontal illumination but keep it diffused and avoid glare as much as i could. So i decided to just use the pop-up flash on the Panasonic FZ8 since the subject distance was only about 2FT or a bit more. I used an old wire coat hanger from the closet to build the frame for a 'mini light box. The dimensions on the mini lightbox were about 7" X 5" for the front panel, and the metal frame held the front panel about 6IN in front of t he pop-up flash. Once the basic frame was ready, I covered it completely with white ripstop nylon, in front and all the way around. I think I ended up with 2 layers of white ripstop nylon on the front panel. The ends of the coat hangers were fashioned into hooks that would fit under the pop-up flash and clip to the bottom of it. The bottom of the mini-light-box rested on top of the extended-lens-hood. So when I used the pop-up flash, instead of getting bright direct light, I got a good burst of 5x7 diffused light to illuminate the whole front of the watch. The reflectors bounced the remaining flash-light into the sides to fill in the shadows.</p>

<p>I used Aperture Priority Auto mode on the FZ8 camera, and shot the pics with an aperture of about F5. On that camera F8 is the smallest it would go, and I wanted an aperture about halfway between the smallest and the widest opening. I think I had the ISO set to 200 since i using diffused light. With an apeture of F5, the camera was selecting a shutter of about 1/80th sec, which was just fine since I had it on the tripod. I was also using a 10 sec self-delay timer so I could trigger the shoot then take my hands off and let the camera take it.</p>

<p>I set the precise focus point on the center of the watch dial, which worked out pretty good most of the time. On a few watches, the AF seemed to have a problem getting good AF lock on the dial, so in those cases I used the bottom edge of the dial. I avoided almost all the glare by positiong the tripod head to the right and higher up than the watch.</p>

<p>The F5 aperture gave me plenty of depth of field for a wrist-watch, and practically the whole watch was in sharp clean focus - no blurries.</p>

<p>The resulting set of pictures turned out pretty good, with only 2 watches needing to be reshot due to slight out-of-focus.</p>

<p>I know this type setup is a bit different than the one you describe, but it illustrates that you can use the lights you have on hand, just experiment and dont be afraid to improvise.</p>

[jae_ahn]

<p>i'll take some pictures of what my set up looks like and post it up. along with a product. during my research, i thought my lights would be sufficient to light the background. so what i did was move 4 of the 6 to point at the back ground, and 2 to light the product, but it didn't seem to light the product all that well. and diffusing the lights end up making the whole background seem kind of gray and not white enough to blow it out. <br>

i'll try and do what Mr. Ferrel has suggested. if i might not need any additional equipment, that would be great, but i don't mind getting something that will get it to work.<br>

the table i'm using is kind of narrow. i plan on lengthening it so the product isn't so close to the background. is that a good move?</p><div></div>

[jae_ahn]

<p>1 more of my set up and the last one is what my usual shot of my product ends up being. from there i take it to photoshop and get rid of all the background to make it all white.</p>

<p>the whole thing is covered in a thin white bed sheet type material. the background is white seamless paper. and on the sides i added some white foam core bought from a craft store. thought it might help.</p><div></div>

[jae_ahn]

<p>sorry, 1 upload at a time i guess</p>

<p>picture info</p>

<p>A 1/30 F5 ISO200 24mm<br>

+1.3<br>

wb 4 A2, G1 sRGB PT AUTO</p><div></div>

[jae_ahn]

<p>oops, sorry... my camera is a D3000</p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>If you want the background white, but don't want to over expose the foreground, you must light the background separately. Try moving a couple of those lights so they cover the b/g. And you should use a wider reflector for those lamps, yours are narrowing the beam too much for the distance you're working at.</p>

<p>I suggest you get the book "Light - Science & Magic" to learn how light works and how to control it. Throwing more lamps at this just gives you more ugly highlights on the vinyl and doesn't help your picture.</p>

<p><Chas></p>

 

[kelly_flanigan1]

<p>Just see Flo in the Progressive car insurance adverts!</p>

[mike_earussi1]

<p>If your paper is thin enough, positioning a very bright light behind it to transilluminate it should help.</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>jae,</p>

<p>Look <a href="http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html">here,</a> there is every type of off camera lighting in here including a good bit of product photos. Read it all and you will know how to redo your lighting for under $50.</p>

<p>Also Charles suggestion of the book "Light - Science & Magic" is the best few dollars you can spend.</p>

[jae_ahn]

<p>i'm trying to start with what Mr. Ferrel has suggested. i'm only on step 2. i was able to figure out how to set the camera to shutter priority. It was to turn the dial to S. as far as i know. i then turned the shutter speed down to 1/60th of a second but ISO is in auto. it says ISO-A. i can set it manually to a certain number but i don't think there is a low. i've seen it display 'Lo', with a message at the top saying subject is too dark. but if i move it to a different object, the 'Lo' goes away and displays an F number.</p>

<p>from here i pressed it half way, with the view finder filled with only the white of the background. it showed an f/5.3. i didn't see any blinking numbers. the only thing that was blinking was the icon for ISO-A. the focused the 4 lights in one spot and put the view finder there and i got it to f/5.6.</p>

<p>i don't have a gray card for the product. i could look for a gray product.</p>

<p> </p>

[jae_ahn]

<p>i've read my camera can only go to 5.6 but so far i've seen it go as low or high as f/5. so i guess that means i need enough light for the background to make it about f/10?</p>

 

[jae_ahn]

<p>it seems with the lights i'm using, i can't get it that high to even f/8</p>

[jae_ahn]

<p>i'm thinking of going to home depot and see about changing my bulb to something brighter. but have to make sure my lamps can handle it. if not, i'll get some some different lamps that can handle a higher wattage bulb.</p>

[cabbiinc]

<p>jae, sorry to leave you unanswered for a while but life happens eh?</p>

<p>I'm a Canon shooter but I believe that Nikon's ISO starts at 200 and goes up from there. ISO 200 or even 400 is fine. Avoid going higher though.</p>

<p>Maybe I was a little confusing in my example above. If you can't achieve f/8 you need to adjust your shutter speed until you can.<br>

Basically you'll be trying to get some numbers you can write down. You'll want ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Keeping all of these things constant will mean that you won't have to change anything for future shooting as long as you don't move the lights. So let me clarify what you want to do.</p>

<p>Set up your lights. You've posted your setup after my post so you'll need to move those lights. The bag is closer to the lights than the background so you'll never light the background more than the bag the way it sits. Move 4 of those lights behind the bag aimed at the background and just the background. The light bouncing off the background will backlight the bag enough for your purposes. Turn just the background lights on and meter the background. Write the numbers down (even if they aren't close to what I said earlier, just tell us what you have so far).<br>

Then turn those light off and turn on the lights for the bag. Meter using the same shutter speed and ISO and write those numbers down.</p>

<p>Hopefully you'll have an ISO and shutter speed that are the same and two apertures that aren't too close in numbers. If the background number is double the bags number you're doing good. Now take the bags numbers and use that in M mode. Yes you'll be doing Manual mode. It's not as hard as it sounds.</p>

<p>If you're going to go buy more lights try to get the same lights. Otherwise you may wind up with different colored lights. That may be good or bad depending on what you're after but I'm assuming you just want straight white looking natural looking light. Different types of lights can produce different shades of light, and cameras are particularly good at seeing that color shift.</p>

<p>When you read that you want to blow the background by a stop or two you may not have realized what you needed to do. Generally speaking to produce a stop of light above what you're at you need to double the light. So if you start with 6 lights on the bag and you want to light the background a stop over that you'll need to buy 12 lights just for the background (or that much wattage anyways), but if you have two types of bulbs you'll start fighting color shifts, one light source will be yellow the other blue. Keeping all the same lights would help avoid that. You may still buy more lights, just plan to buy enough for both the bag and the background.<br>

The color shift problem is why you'll see people buying "Daylight Balanced" bulbs. They are close to the same color as sunlight. If all of these bulbs are trying to match the same natural light it gives the photographer more consistency.</p>

[jae_ahn]

<p>no problem on getting back to me quickly, i totally understand everyone can't be here answering all my questions. i appreciate all the help</p>

<p>with that in mind, i tried to figure things out on my own, and i happened to figure out that changing the shutter speed increased the aperture number. so since my camera can only go as low as f/5, i decreased the shutter speed until i could get the background to show f/10. i also fiddled with the iso settings since it was on auto. on my camera it goes from 100-1600 and Hi 1. whatever that is. and i have to say, some of my pictures really surprised me, i think with about 3 more lights, 2 for the back and 1 for the front, i'll get what i want.</p>

<p>i shot this one with these settings, i changed the iso on some and also changed the exposure compensation to +1.3. i don't know if i should have left that at 0 and worked with the lights more, but i'm hoping i can get some opinions and advice from here on.</p>

<p>M 1/15 F5 ISO140 32MM<br>

+/- +1.3<br>

WB FLUORESCENT A2, G1 sRGB (picture control set to Portrait) (active d lighting on Auto -i don't know what this does)</p>

<p>and regarding the lights, i haven't purchased any new ones, but my original thought was to definitely make sure all the lights are the same. especially the same temp. i was thinking of taking the lamp and the bulb to home depot and have someone assist me there. possible get 9 brighter bulbs, and 3 additional lamps, maybe the work light kind so it's not as narrow as what i have.</p>

<p>in the picture, the handle seems to be pretty bright, and i think it's because the background light is so close to the product. i'd like to move it forward more, but i don't have enough table space yet. will that fix it, or does it just need to be diffused more?</p><div></div>

[jae_ahn]

<p>pictures of how i changed my set up. moved 4 to light the back directly, and use the white bed sheet to diffuse the light. i was also suggested in using transparent white nylon material, i don't know what kind of difference it will make though.</p><div></div>

[jae_ahn]

<p>new set up 2</p><div></div>

[hal_b]

<p>I'd like to preface by saying that I think you've already achieved something here. The new result is improved over the previous one.</p>

<p>To expound on something I mentioned earlier, the product you would want to look for is "Acetate paper". This is a translucent paper that you can use to make diffusion panels. Also, the bedsheet concept works better the farther from the sheet that the lights are. I can see that you don't have alot of room, so I'll leave it to you to be creative, but the idea is that the farther from the sheet that the light it, the more diffuse and even the light will be. Of course, the sheet eats 1-2 stops of light, or more depending on the thickness, etc. Also, the farther you move your lights, the less effective they are still. The way you've set it up, you are gaining something in the way of diffusion while maintaining maximum brightness from your lights, although you can see from your hot spots that you have not yet achieved perfect diffusion. Also, to add more confusion, the more diffuse the light is the less control you have over its placement.</p>

<p>It appears that it would certainly help if you had more room to work with. Your background lights are so close to the background that they are creating hot spots. If you are to have a hot spot, make sure it is behind the object, not off to the side. You might point your right-side lights to the left more, and the left-side lights to the right, so that the lighting crosses and covers the background more evenly.</p>

<p>In my opinion, I would deemphasize the need to overly brighten your background. I use a setup that isn't nearly so elaborate myself, and I think your desire to increase the quantity of lights from 6 to 9 is probably not necessary. The idea, at its essence, is for the background to appear pure white relative to the subject. In reality, the background IS white, so logic would follow that if both the subject AND background are evenly lit with the SAME amount of light, the background will display as white when the subject is properly exposed.</p>

<p>The problem is only when you light your subject more than your background, in which case the background tends to appear grey when the subject is properly exposed. Again, this is only true because your backdrop actually is white, not some darker shade or coor. You should be able to get by with 3 lights on your subject and 3 lights on your backdrop. Or 2 lights on the subject, 2 on the backdrop, and 2 to fill shadows on the subject and create extra spill onto the backdrop. You have to be conscious of the distance between the lights and the object they illuminate. In your first example, your background lights are far overhead, drastically reducing their ability to light the background. So your foreground lights were acting much brighter in comparison, due to their proximity to the subject.</p>

<p>What you must achieve is for a medium grey object in the subject location to be properly exposed when the white background is about 3 stops brighter. How you achieve this is completely up to your imagination. There is no hard-and-fast rule of "3 lights here, 3 lights there". Because light is so sensitive to proximity, you can really fool the lights be moving them closer or farther away. Also, you will get more evenly blended light the farther away you move them from the object. Note, the key here is blended, not diffuse. Diffuse light is created by bringing the lights closer.</p>

<p>Finally, you don't need to be using exposure compensation at all. Exposure comp is only for using Shutter priority or Aperture priority modes (also Program). In Manual mode, it is irrelevant. All that matters is what you set your ISO, shutter, and aperture. When in Manual mode, your viewfinder meter will indicate how much over or under the meter reading you are exposing. This is a fine point, but one that you should understand.</p>

<p>You might bump your ISO up to about 400-640. This will give you alot more freedom with your shutter speeds and apertures. You ought to have a shutter speed of at least 1/30. If your shutter is all the way down to 1/15, you'll waste alot of time trying to be extra careful that you aren't shaking the camera. Also, D-Lighting isn't something that would offer much benefit in this situation. It just wastes more time while the camera has to process each photo for twice as long.</p>

[cabbiinc]

<p>I'm only going to add a few things here. You're already heading in the right direction.</p>

<p>1) I'd be hesitant to drape things on hot lights. Fire hazards.<br>

2) The whole point of diffusing light is to make the effective light source bigger. Bigger light source = softer light, that's what you want for the product itself. That's why you'll see portrait sessions with an umbrella just out of view. But to diffuse the light without allowing the light to enlarge you won't see too much of a difference.<br>

Another way to enlarge the light source would be to do away with the sheets all together and just aim the lights at the walls on the side. Placing the lights as far from the walls as you can but still not within the frame of the shot will create a larger effective light source.<br>

3) I would also take 1 or 2 of those background lights and move it to the center behind the subject. Create a hotspot just behind the product and it will emphasize the product more. It might not work if what you're after is a white webpage with images seemlessly floating on it, but it's an option to think about.</p>

[jae_ahn]

<p>1. note taken<br>

2. confused on the part about aim the lights at the walls on the side. i just have a backdrop and the sides are just a white bed sheet. so there really isn't a wall. if the wall you're speaking of is the backdrop, it's just hard to see it with my eye. without all the lights pointed to a spot on the wall, it doesn't seem like the light is doing much to make it whiter or brighter.<br>

3. yeah, i'm trying for floating items on a white page but a slight shadow in front is acceptable to show a little depth. </p>

<p>another problem i've noticed after my new set up, is that i'm not getting enough light on the paper directly to the sides of the product. my background lights are pointed at the background, and i have a couple of diffused lights pointing to the front from either side, but it leaves the rest of the paper to the sides of the product kind of gray. like i would need a light on either side just to get that part white.</p>