Shooting with white background for stock photography

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Permalink Reply by LorettaW on November 6, 2008 at 4:39am

Oy. Thanks much for taking time to reply. I'm still new at working all the settings on my DSLR - Dan Cossack of this forum helped a bit, so I know what I need to learn at least. I don't think I am facile enough to slow my shutter speed down yet (unless that means highest ISO setting) and then use aperture priority. I have been experimenting with bracketing and A-DEP but I've got a long way to go.

So many of the home made (or otherwise bought cheaply) soft boxes I've seen demonstrated on the web seem to get this beautiful, soft, glowing, bright interior light using one "flash" to the side, although I've seen examples of other light boxes that are lit up like a hot set on a film shoot. I wonder if the tungsten lights are the wrong way to go. What kind of lights did you use?

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Nahabedian on November 6, 2008 at 2:48pm

I don't have a softbox, yet I can have nice white background photos by using a simple technique, just take a large piece of white paper (A tchick one is better) and put it in a sort that one edge is on the ground/table/whatever (that's where you are going to put your object), and the opposite edge will be elevated (put a pile of books or whatever behind) forming a curve, I hope you understand what I mean.

Also use a good lighting and of course a proper white balance on your camera.

And of course, you need post processing afterwards to clean and retouch everything ;) My brother got refused some photos because they were not "processed" enough!

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Cossack on November 7, 2008 at 10:40am

You could try using an Infinity Board ($34.95 from B&H Photo) rather than using a dome. I prefer the boards to domes because they are easy to work with, except you need to be more careful about eliminating shadows. I use very large softboxes on my lights as well as umbrellas. Basically light it up with everything you got. I do not use Tungsten lights at all -- can't stand them. But you could make it work as long as you white balance correctly. However, the funny colors you see is the result of the tungsten light not retaining its color throughout the background. I think flash is a much better choice when using white backgrounds. I have also used fluorescent (with the Westcott TD5 spiderlites) with good results.

Whatever you do, if you are making product shots, put your camera on a tripod, slow your shutter down and use a remote shutter trigger so there is absolutely no camera shake at all. This will allow you to use a low ISO and tiny aperture for the sharpest clearest products shots.

Whites rarely every come out completely white. I will always adjust the background whites using levels in Photoshop. That is perfectly acceptable as long as you don't clip any of the non-white pixels.

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Permalink Reply by LorettaW on November 7, 2008 at 12:39pm

Thanks Daniel C. The infinity board looks MUCH easier to work with than the lightbox. I didn't realize the lightbox was going to be such a pain in ways that never crossed my mind - such as keeping the backdrop smooth and the edges between the backdrop and box concealed. The tungsten lights are godawful. I found that the box threw plenty of shadows. I'm going to ditch the lights and use flash and maybe get some lights from Lowe's since per youtube and other google results, people use those too (nothing I googled came up with an infinity board though and that thing looks great.)

Daniel N - when you use your method, how do you place your lights? Do you clip lights above. just flood from the sides? When I picture setting that up in my apartment (which has no space to dedicate to photography) I'm presented with wondering how to rig something from above to light it up. I was hoping I could just flood the thing with a light suround or something, but not have to rig.

I do have a small tripod for this kind of shot.

I've seen photos where the photographer appears to be using natural sun and a single flash while using a lightbox, I've seen photos where they've got a whole lighting grid rigged up, and both set ups seem to be after the same thing, a simple product shot.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Cossack on November 7, 2008 at 12:57pm

Just one suggestion: if you have harsh lights, don't point them directly at the object. Bounce the lights off something like a white board - preferable a board that has some light texture. Foam core works great for that and you can pick those up cheap at an arts store.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Cossack on November 7, 2008 at 1:15pm

Here are some of my examples:

This is my setup.

This is the result.

Here is one of all of my cameras.

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Permalink Reply by fighterguppy on November 8, 2008 at 12:38am

I live in an apt and don't have much space. As much as I would love to have an area for photography currently it's just not possible. I also dabble in portraits, fashion, stock photography. What I do is shoot in front of a green screen careful to eliminate shadows... and rely heavily on post production to square it away. I'm at work and don't have any examples at the moment. The screen is portable, easy to maintain-store and I've produced some fabulous photos with it. It doesn't have to be a green screen either, just a solid color other than white.

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Permalink Reply by LorettaW on November 8, 2008 at 12:55am

Fighterguppy, I'm the same way. I live in an apartment and my set up is going to have to be a modest kitchen table, coffee table, or similar. I'm most curious about setting up lights to photograph in a small photographic environment (small infinity box, backdrop or lightbox)

You "white" the green screen in post production? Where do you set up the green screen in your apartment if you don't mind my asking, how big is it, and again, lights? Green screen is a professional backdrop you purchase?

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