Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Hi there!

I'm brand new to the forum and am excited to learn! Would love your help.... I need to start doing some product shoots for my husbands business. The products will be aftermarket auto parts, mostly replacement headlights (the whole headlight). I'm a natural light photographer, so this is all very foreign to me and I just started researching things...it's a bit overwhelming at first.

We obviously want/need the end result to be as professional of a look as we can get, with as little editing in Photoshop as possible. The area we have for photoshoots is small and will be on a table top. What all do I need? A rep from PB suggested two AlienBees B800's and an Omni relector. Is that it and enough? Just want to make sure I get the right stuff from the beginning. Any input or help is appreciated.

Thanks!

:)
Julie

My two cents would be to get B400s instead of B800s, given that you are going to be shooting in a small space.

See http://www.paulcbuff.com/sfe-howmuchpower.php

It sounds like the lights will be only a few feet away from your subjects. In that case, I'd expect a pair of B400s to give plenty of light - you'll likely have to turn them down to half power or less.

Thank you EKB. I was wondering if the 400's would be better.

My husband just told me that the products will be on a white "turntable" and he has a software program that rotates the turntable, while taking different shots..... basically gets shots from every angle. Wouldn't that mean he would need continuous light for that and, if so, what would you recommend? Sorry if that is a silly question.... this is all greek to me right now! :)

I'm really not an expert of product photography. I based my suggestion on my experience with my own B800 and B400s, where I'd expect two B400s at tabletop distances to be plenty of light, even with a camera at ISO 100 and f/11. And there I've reached the end of what I'm confident about suggesting.

If you could give more details about the size of your table & shooting area, the model of camera you're using, and generally what you have so far as a setup, then people who have experience with product photography could give you better suggestions.

This should not require continuous lighting. In fact, if you used continuous light you would have a blur problem.

AB400s recycle in 1/2 second, so rotating the table slowly enough to take a shot every 1/2 second or more should work fine, and give you sharp, unblurred results.

But remember, you'll probably want various vertical camera positions, so I might suggest a foot switch to start and stop the table so you can hand hold the camera to get top, side and other angles at each position of rotation.