How To Take Better Product Photos

I recently posted my photos for the Bake Me a Wish review and received a few questions:

What equipment do you use?

• Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 Lens
• Lowel EGO Digital Imaging, Tabletop Fluorescent Light Unit
• Lowel EGO Sweep Table-top Background Support Stand & Colored Paper Backgrounds
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 7

How much does it cost?

Everything above probably costed around $1,000

Thats expensive, how can I take better photos without the cost?

One item I absolutely recommend is some sort of editing program.  I particularly like Photoshop.  It takes some time to learn, but you will get the hang of it.  I went from no photoshop experience to working for a photographer and editing all of her photos.  All I do to my product photos is:

• Auto Levels
• Auto Contrast
• Unsharpen (which really means sharpen.  Weird, I know.)
• Sometimes a vignette (The darkness around the edges).  You select the lasso tool and draw a circle around the image.  Photoshop usually comes with some sort of basic “actions”.  So all you have to do is then push vignette.

What can I do to make the backgrounds?

Before I got my light and background set, I used my resources.  I cut a cardboard box to resemble a background stand (similar to the Table-top Background Support Stand)  I then tapped plain white printer paper to cover it, but you could use any color construction paper.  When taking photos, I propped everything up against a chair.  You always want to take the photos near a large window that lets in light so you don’t have to use your flash.  These are the kind of photos I got from my homemade stand and background.

Feel free to ask any comments below and I will reply to them.