Taking Indoor Photos for Online Selling

J

JoyF

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I sell online a lot and take many of my pictures outside, but at times there is bad weather or I'd just like to be able to take a nicer picture inside. What are the best reasonably priced and sized lights for taking detailed indoor photos for online selling? Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
BLKRCAT's idea is a great one. However, a cheaper alternative is a sturdy cardboard box - cut out large windows on the 2 sides and top - cover these with tracing paper or some similar diffusing material and line with whatever coloured paper you wish. Light how you wish and bingo! A virtually free lightbox.
This is an example using my home-made lightbox
nikon_sp.jpg
 
JoyF said:
I sell online a lot and take many of my pictures outside, but at times there is bad weather or I'd just like to be able to take a nicer picture inside. What are the best reasonably priced and sized lights for taking detailed indoor photos for online selling? Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks!
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I've always used a white collapsible light box and my speedlights. Recently I saw the Foldio2, I'll pick one up soon for my online sales shooting. Looks like a great all in one product.

No more speedlights, pocketwizards, cords, etc. Set it up, turn it on and shoot :)
 
I like the idea of the Craphy, as it has a large lightbox and seems quite reasonably priced. Thanks for the great tips.
 
You didn't say what subject matter you're interested in shooting. It makes a great deal of difference in determining the best route. I've been a commercial photographer since the early 70's and use everything from fresnel mini spots to large HMI to hand held strobes to 50k watt seconds of studio strobes. Sometimes spots are best and other times huge softboxes. I use a lo of incandescent spots bounced off of white foam core as well. My point is it depends on how larger or small the subject t and what it is.

What are you going to shoot?
 
You can go to my website and look at the commercial section
http://www.x-rayarts.com/commercial.html
It's a little outdated now but I'm 90% retired. In any case they're still good illustrations of lighting. One thing I'll say is I NEVER use a cube and often go to spots or strobes with beds for better control. Soft boxes just give a flood of light without a lot of control. That's good sometimes but it's hard to light subjects that way to create roundness of tone and dimension. Excellent lighting has subtle tonality and dimension created by the light. It's not just flooding a subject with flat light.
 
Dan Daniel said:
Recently started using this PVC plastic for the background-
https://www.amazon.com/Meking-Photo...9264&sr=8-4&keywords=pvc+photo+backdrop+white

It has a little spring to it so needs to be clamped or taped down a bit. Once it is in position, it lights well, is stable- no creases or such, AND it cleans off with windex.

This material inside one of the light tents, bright LED bulbs- clean, quick Ebay shots.
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Thanks! Having something that can be cleaned would be helpful.
 
x-ray said:
You didn't say what subject matter you're interested in shooting. It makes a great deal of difference in determining the best route. I've been a commercial photographer since the early 70's and use everything from fresnel mini spots to large HMI to hand held strobes to 50k watt seconds of studio strobes. Sometimes spots are best and other times huge softboxes. I use a lo of incandescent spots bounced off of white foam core as well. My point is it depends on how larger or small the subject t and what it is.

What are you going to shoot?
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That's the "problem". I shoot all kinds of things from antiques and collectibles to shoes to stereo gear to watches/pocket watches, etc. So, I have small items and I have large items. I'm sure I'll just end up picturing some items outside because of size or some other reason, but I think that having a clean, well-lighted indoor shooting setup could be profitable. Thanks!
 
Shoot off a tripod and you can go as low a 1/1 second or more to get natural lit images, no matter what the weather is.

19894881_487571204941051_5663607727917252678_n.jpg

This was shot on a low light day, ISO 400, aperture 2.0 and 1/1 second exposure. It's actually sharper than this image, this is linked in from Facebook and the compression takes sharpness away...​
 
JoyF said:
I do have a tripod. My camera is probably not the best. It's only a Panasonic DMC-SZ7.
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Unknown to me. Might be fine in manual mode to really choose exposure and depth of field. Set the white balance correctly and you probably can shoot JPEG straight away, no hassle with big RAW files
 
johannielscom said:
Unknown to me. Might be fine in manual mode to really choose exposure and depth of field. Set the white balance correctly and you probably can shoot JPEG straight away, no hassle with big RAW files
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I'll have to play around with my camera. There are a lot of settings that I have just ignored. Tweaking the white balance and other small changes may do the trick. Thanks.
 
I think Jonmanjiro will be a good adviser. He is gear pornographer. His product photos make all the things he sells look great! :D
 
Something I find extremely irritating is shallow DOF on product photos where someone is trying to sell a used product. I want to see every detail clearly. I figure the people shooting shallow DOF are trying to cover flaws.
 
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