Key Equipments for Product Photography

Photography has a very exciting job profile. It's all about creativity, technicalities and skills. When you are doing product photography, it means you are either working for a client or trying to promote your own product. It's more of an advertising campaign than a general photo-shoot. In a product photo-shoot, the entire focus is on the product. Every essential element should be incorporated to gain the best result as marketing campaigns invest huge amounts to make their products look great.

Along with a good professional camera and knowledge of techniques, there are certain equipments which makes a photography assignment fruitful. Usage of equipments is according to the size and kind of products. You may use your same camera and lenses, but there are specific kinds of lights and other accessories that can be used to intensify your product in the photograph. Products vary in size and types. Specific types of lighting would be required for different products. Lighting for small and minute products will be essentially different from large products.

For large products, large lights are used for effective lighting in a wide frame to include the whole product. Large diffusion frames are helpful to cover a large object in outdoor shooting and also to get rid of bright day light.

Bounce boards creates nice soft lighting. It's more glamorous if the photograph is shot under soft lighting compared to harsh light. It's better to have large selection of flags (black cloths in a metal frame which are used to align light by shaping and cutting the light) of various dimensions. Product photography can be tedious, hence every necessary element should be used to bring out the tiniest detail in a product.

For small products, equipments used for lighting are smaller or rather miniature versions of what is used while shooting large products. Equipments giving small beam of light, small flags, tiny light panels, and small bounce boards are needed. Sufficient amount of stands are needed to set up light anywhere.

For smaller or tiny products, a mini stage is required. A mini stage is a tiny white cyclorama which is a background with no corners. It creates the appearance of having infinite space. For instance, if you want to have a spinning effect in your product while shooting a video, a turntable can serve the purpose.

You should also take care that every time you are shooting your product, it should look fresh and have no finger prints on it. Hence, it's important to keep cleaners and gloves while handling miniature products.
Equipments used in product photography are generally same for all products: lights, stands, bounce, diffusion, and flags. It just varies between products.