Here’s something you can try at home. No fancy lights, and you can do it at night, without natural light. All you need is one lamp, I got mine from Ikea. And a styrofoam board. But any white surface will work as well – paper, cardboard, etc. This is to just bounce the light and improve its quality. You may not want harsh lighting with strong shadows. So that will be useful.

Working with one light is easier because you only need to worry about the colour temperature of that light. Whatever it is, don’t mix light sources unless you plan to shoot in b&w. The different colour temperature will make you pull your hair. Even if it’s another similar lamp, the bulbs do not necessarily give the same colour. So make life easier and work with one source, and use light modifiers. In this case, a styrofoam board.

Learn to use the custom white balance to get a neutral tone under your light. The info is found in your camera’s manual. Essentially it involves setting the white balance to custom white balance, shooting a piece of white paper, and using that setting. This is only neutral under that lighting. So you see the problem if you mix light sources? If your camera is tuned to warm light, any daylight that is captured will appear blue.

Here’s what the setup looks like. The velvet cloth sucks up light so shooting against it makes it easier if you don’t want to worry about shadows.

You can use this same setup for shooting small products. I wrote about something similar awhile back about shooting products at home with a simple setup.

Have fun!

This article is to help those who want to take pictures of food or products at home without any professional equipment. This is a simple one-lamp setup, shot with a digital compact camera. Here’re the things you need: Continue reading 'Shooting Products at Home'»