Lighting for product photography and practical suggestions (1)

Product photographic lighting and practical suggestions (1) This article covers the basic concepts behind product photographic lighting and discusses the best practices, which will hone your skills and bring excellent, clear and eye-catching product photos to customers. Many people are returning to the foundation of American economy-innovation and manufacturing. A considerable number of people make artworks in small businesses or their own garages, basement workshops or local manufacturers to create their own products. A new generation of "manufacturers" movement swept across the country, and local manufacturers listed their products on their personal websites or Taobao, Yi Bei and other websites for sale. Everyone mentioned above needs eye-catching product pictures to attract the attention of potential customers. Although we all have smart phones now, to be honest, it is not bad to take pictures with them now. It seems that it can be used to take things to take product drawings, but these photos are all from mobile phones with limited functions, and the films taken will never have the "impact" of professional equipment in the studio. So, how can we shoot our own new products to attract customers? In short, the key lies in polishing. This paper covers the basic concepts behind product photographic lighting and discusses the best practices, which will hone your skills and bring excellent, clear and eye-catching product photos to customers. What is product photography? Product photography is a subset of studio photography. In studio photography, lighting and product display skills are carefully developed to achieve the following goals: to provide the best possible lighting for your products and take photos that can attract customers, so that you can turn shoppers into card swipers. 00 1, lighting terms and basis. Studio lighting is basically composed of keyboard light, fill light and backlight. The main light is the main light source, which is usually placed on the axis far away from the camera and directly shines on the product (or object). The auxiliary light is secondary, usually of lower intensity (which may mean less light or placed at a longer distance), and placed opposite to the main light. Backlight is a lamp placed behind (or suspended above) the main body to better outline the outline of the main body from the background. If shooting needs to be included in the shooting background, the photographer can even add background light to make the background feel or texture, thus making the subject stand out. 002, product photography background. In product photography, photographers often want to "cut" objects from the background so that they can be placed on the pure white (or any other color) of website pages. If this is the final result you want, then choose to put white light on the white background such as white desktop and seamless white background paper, so that your background will be overexposed and appear pure white. This helps you to choose the product separately in the later stage and then replace the background you finally need. Not all products look good in white, so you may need to use other colors of paper background, or consider shooting products in a creative environment-the choice depends on which scene can best sell your products and what products can be delivered. Apple's popular "wet floor" appearance is also a common background skill. This can be done in Photoshop, or the product can be placed on a reflective substrate such as plexiglass. 003. Lighting arrangement. Lighting layout is a key decision made by the photographer after setting the scene/background. Where will the main light and fill light be placed? How does this position affect the contours of product shadows and highlights? Experience is very important in the field of product photography. Therefore, for inexperienced people, the patience of trial and error is needed to determine the best effect of different light sources. 004, always on vs flashing. Studio lighting considerations should include the basic differences between ordinary lighting and flashlights. It is a good solution for people who just started shooting products. Examples of always-on lamp solutions are LED panels, fluorescent mercury vapor tubes or incandescent bulbs. Some offer dimmers, others don't. Although the normally bright lamps of the above substrates can emit uniform normally bright light sources, their brightness is usually not very high. Strong spot or flash lamp is a xenon vapor tube with high voltage capacitor, which can release instantaneous light pulse, and its intensity is several hundred thousand times stronger than that of ordinary lamp, but the real person is often shorter, and the flash lamp usually takes less than one second. Because the intensity of constant light is limited, you can't freeze the action as easily as with a flash. Using constant light with insufficient intensity may mean that you need to use a shutter speed slower than the ideal speed to get the correct exposure. This can eliminate most of the lights that are always on when shooting moving objects when photographers need clearly focused images. It doesn't matter if it is a fixed product. Usually lit lamps are also difficult to fine-tune, although LED kits with dimmers are easier to use than incandescent or fluorescent lamps. With the help of strongpoint, people can adjust the light intensity in increments of minutes, and because the shutter speed is not important, we can also adjust the aperture according to the light moving around the object (near or far) to control the "appearance" of the product. One of the attractions of lights that are always on is what you see is what you get-when you measure the light in the center with a camera, your photo should adjust the shutter speed or ISO according to the current light intensity seen by the naked eye, thus changing the exposure/appearance of lighting products, because the amount of light emitted by most continuous light sources will not change much. The result of shooting with constant light is contrary to the workflow of flash. In addition to considering the camera setting parameters, in strongpoint, usually the light intensity of each connected strongpoint will change as you change other parameter settings or fill the power of strongpoint. When stroboscopic lighting is used, the modification of various parameters will have a great influence on the final image-therefore, you may not know the final result until you press the shutter, watch and adjust it. The photos taken by constant light can have different color temperatures, which is very important in product photography. Strongpoint's color balance is much easier, because they usually set the Kelvin color temperature around 5500 when they leave the factory. The color temperature of constant light is uncertain, which makes us use similar color cards such as X-Ritecorcheckercard when shooting. There are reference standards during and after shooting. Gating and synchronization. Unlike ordinary lighting fixtures, bright spots need a device that synchronizes with the camera shutter. For example, a transmitter can be used on the camera's hot shoes, and the receiver is connected to the main light, so that the flash will be triggered every time the shutter is pressed. If multiple flashlights are used, more receivers must be connected, so that as long as the main light connected to the transmitter flashes, other auxiliary lights will flash with it. The function of the flash (allowing you to lower the aperture to get a deeper depth of field), the ability to freeze the motion and improve the color accuracy are all worthwhile. When using a flash, the shutter speed should not exceed the fastest shutter synchronization speed of the camera, which is the mechanical limit of shutter curtain opening and closing, generally around 1/200 seconds (my main camera Canon is such a 5DMarkIV). The shutter mechanism is like an open curtain, which transmits light to your sensor. The first curtain slides open to start exposure, and then the second curtain slides closed to end exposure. When the speed is lower than a certain speed (usually 1/200 seconds), when the last curtain starts (starts to "close"), the first curtain has completed its journey through the sensor (has been completely "opened"). But above the synchronous speed, one curtain still tries to open completely, while the other curtain has started to close, thus partially blocking the sensor. If a part of the flash is covered by a curtain, it cannot reach the whole sensor, and as a result, an ugly black belt appears in part of the image. However, with a normally lit lamp, there is no such problem. But that doesn't mean the flash doesn't work. The depth of field may also be a problem that the lights are always on. Since the light emission is lower than the flash, you need to open the aperture to achieve the correct exposure. This may affect your ability to shoot products with longer depth or blend in with the background clearly. If you have to focus with a medium aperture (such as F8 or higher), you may be forced to raise the ISO to an unacceptable level. The most powerful light source in our life is worth mentioning: sunlight or "natural light" is an excellent light source for products, especially if they are to be displayed in the natural environment. For example, this photo is an image of a customized coffee cup. At that time, I was doing business in CoffeeBar, Traci's favorite coffee shop.