Digital Photography Lighting Tips

Studio Lighting Techniques Without a Studio

If you need digital photographs of your products for eBay, pictures of an engine part for a user manual, or pictures of heirlooms for an insurance company, a simple studio lighting setup will make the pictures better. You can eliminate flash glare and background clutter at the same time you improve the photograph’s detail. Yes, you can edit images later, but good lighting and backgrounds saves time.

Unless you are a professional with demanding clients, you don't need the sort of studio shown in Illustration 1.  Halogen work lights or desk lamps are adequate, widely available, and far less expensive then lights sold for photography studios. In a pinch, high-watt incandescent lights work. Fluorescent lights are the least usable, because they require the most color correction. Avoid tinted lights unless you are photographing weird scenes and special effects. I was forced to take some pictures under strong yellow light once, because the product was light-sensitive, and the color correction was extremely difficult.

A temporary lighting setup can be constructed on a small table, file cabinet or the floor. The size and number of the lights varies with the size of the object, but the basic setups are as shown here. The lights might be halogen reading lights for jewelry or 400-watt halogen work lights for a motorcycle. If the object cannot be moved, bring the lights and the backdrop to the object.

2-light Basic Setup
Lighting from an angle, as shown in the first illustration, minimizes shadows. Move the lights until the object looks good in the camera’s viewfinder. If you want shadows, use one light. You can use reflectors to bounce light into the shadow areas if you want to minimize them. Glare will tend to be reflected back at the lights and not into the camera lens. Illustration 2 shows the components and their position for the simplest setup.