Common Lighting Problems in Product Photography

The right product photos can make a world of difference in terms of your ability to convince people to make a purchase. If you can bring out the many great features that your products have to offer, consumers will be more willing to purchase them, especially if they are buying them sight unseen online. But the key to great product photos is the lighting. Without the right lighting, your products won’t appear true to life, or they could come out looking worse than they really are.

Continue reading to learn about common lighting problems in product photography so you can be sure to avoid them.

Evenly Lighting Small Items

Small items, in particular, can be quite difficult to photograph. In fact, they may be harder than large objects to photograph accurately. In order to get the best results with small objects, you can use a lot of bounce cards or reflector cards to bounce your light around until you get clean, even results.

Another option would be to use many lights and then soften them using modifiers so that the reflections that are created on the product are not so harsh, and so you can minimise the appearance of shadows as much as possible.

Too Dull and Flat

Another common problem that some photographers encounter while shooting products is dull or flat lighting. This prevents the product’s details from really showing through in the images, and it can make a product appear just as dull, flat, and unappealing.

Too Harsh and Too Much Contrast

On the opposite end of the dull and flat images is lighting that creates a sense of harshness or too much contrast. Again, you lose details and it becomes really difficult to show the viewer of the image what the object is really like in real life. This can ultimately result in lost sales.

The solution to lighting that is too dull and flat, or too harsh, is to use natural light wherever and whenever it is possible to do so. But if you do have to make use of artificial lights because you are shooting in a closed studio, for example, it is best to use lights that are white in colour, rather than yellow. This will help bring out a product’s features accurately, especially when it comes to showing off the colours as they truly are.

Finding the Right Colour Balance

It can be a real challenge to find the right colour balance in your camera’s settings, as well as in your bulbs, in order to produce images that show off the colours of a product accurately. Therefore, if you are using multiple lights, make sure that all of the bulbs are colour balanced the same way. Then make sure the white balance in the camera is set to either the correct pre-set or a custom setting based on the colour output of the lights that you are using.

When in doubt, you can always hire a product photography company to get the job done right and fast.