Getting Started
First thing’s first. Establish a working budget. Then consider all the different pieces of equipment needed to begin, and break down how much to allocate to each category. Camera, lens, and tripod should be your first priority. A point-and-shoot camera isn’t going to work for this. Find out where the local pro photographers shop and give the store a visit. Start a relationship from the beginning with the local dealers. There are several good online stores to browse for pro equipment. Saving a few dollars to buy online sounds good until you need some help. Since you’re just starting out, if you buy from your local dealer you’ll feel more comfortable going back and asking questions. There are going to be lots of questions.

A basic digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera with a zoom lens will be your first priority. Canon, Nikon, and Fuji all make good entry-level digital SLR cameras packaged with a medium zoom lens. These lenses are good enough to get you started, and you can expand to other lenses later as needed. Plan on spending anywhere from $1,000 to $1,800 for a good quality starting camera. If that sounds high, remember pro photographers will spend 10 times that amount for the top-of-the-line models. You’ll also need a couple of flash memory cards, a card reader, and a sturdy tripod.

Next is the camera support. There are countless models of tripods to from which to choose. Think about how high you’ll need to go with a camera and the weight of the camera. There’s nothing worse than an expensive camera on a cheap, flimsy tripod. Most cameras can be tethered to the computer through either a USB or FireWire cable for added control during shooting. That can come later as your photographic skills grow. For now, shoot to a memory card and drop it in a card reader to download the images to the hard drive.

Into the Light
Lighting equipment will be a big part of the working budget. A camera’s built-in flash, or an on-camera flash unit, is good for your grip-and-grin photos, but for product photos and portraits of people you’ll need some additional lighting equipment. We can break this down into two categories: strobe lighting and continuous (tungsten) lighting. Both have advantages and disadvantages to consider.

Tungsten lights are also referred to as “hot lights.” The first time you use them on a photo set you’ll see why. “Ouch!” You need to be careful not to get burned. The advantage is lower price and the ability to really see what the lights are doing. When using multiple lights, it’s a kind of what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of lighting. Multiple strobe lights, on the other hand, can be adjusted electronically to each emit different amounts of power and may look different to the eye than what’s in the camera.

Strobe lights break down into two more basic categories. Self-contained, single-powered units (usually called monolights) are the first type. These would be good starting lights. The power for each light is self-contained in each unit. They have a continuous modeling light for viewing and will flash at the time of exposure, syncing with the camera’s shutter. Each lighting unit will have an adjustable ratio of power based on full power, half power, and one-quarter power. The higher the power, the brighter the flash. Luckily, digital SLR cameras don’t need that much power to work efficiently.

The second type of strobe light is the separate power pack and strobe head set up. These come in different models based on power and size. The higher the power and smaller the size translates into more money spent and can eat up your budget if you’re not careful. They have more power and features than the monolights and are a lot more expensive. Strobe power is based on the amount of watt seconds (WS) it’s rated at. Monolights usually come rated between 400 and 1800 WS. Power pack and strobe head units run between 800 and 4000 WS.

Both types need to be synced to the camera shutter. A wire called a sync cord connecting the camera to the strobes is needed to fire the flash. A radio controlled wireless sync is a much better choice. One unit, the receiver, is plugged into the strobe lights and the transmitter is attached to the camera’s flash hot shoe—fewer wires to worry about and safer for the camera. Digital cameras really don’t like being plugged into powerful strobe units directly. There’s a lot of power floating around through all those wires.

The lights can be purchased separately, or in kits with light stands and a carrying case. Either way, you’ll need at least two lights with light stands. If you find that you need more, you can purchase them later. The good thing is your local pro photo store will have salespeople who are very knowledgeable in the different lighting product choices, and can help guide you through the maze of confusion. Show up with a list of what you need and they’ll be all too happy to make recommendations.

Diffusing the Light
Tungsten and strobe lights by themselves yield a very harsh and direct quality of light not suitable for many situations. They have to be modified through some type of diffusion device. For portrait applications, the simple flash umbrella works well and can be very inexpensive. The light bounces into the umbrella and softens the harshness of the light source. This will make a more pleasing gradation between light and shadow on the subject you’re photographing. A disadvantage to the umbrella is that it’s a broad, scattered light source not as adaptable for product photography.

A soft box would be the better choice for product photography. It’s a self-enclosed box that goes around the light and forces the light to go through a diffused white material before reaching the subject. They come in many sizes and shapes for different applications. The larger the box, the softer the light and shadows. Some are lined inside with a silver material for a harder lighting effect. Being a self-enclosed unit, the light cannot escape around the sides of the unit and is forced out the front, creating soft shadows. The soft box is connected to the light with a connecting bracket that is made for the specific brand light unit.

To achieve a similar type of lighting, you could also use a diffusion material stretched over a frame and aim the light to pass through it. They come in premade panels from the photo store, or you can simply buy some photographic division material on a large roll and stretch it over any size panel frame. Frames can be made out of PVC tubing or cut from 2×2″ pieces of wood in 2′, 4′, or 8′ lengths from the local hardware store. In pro photo studios, you’ll find all sizes of handmade frames covered with diffusion material for various applications.

If you really want to make things simple for product shooting, and you don’t feel that comfortable with soft boxes or light panels, a light tent might be the perfect solution. A light tent is a simple pop-up box made of the same diffusion material as the front of the soft boxes. It comes in a few different sizes and has detachable panels around the sides and top.
Place the product inside the light tent and shoot through the open hole in the front or top. A single lighting unit pointed down at the tent will illuminate it with a soft and even lighting that lets the light wrap around the product, creating very soft shadows. This is especially good for products with reflective metal surfaces. With highly reflective products, you need to light what is reflecting into the product, instead of the product itself. These light tents work well with both tungsten and strobe lights.

In the Background
Other accessories you’ll need to check out while shopping at the photo store are a background stand kit, a light boom stand, background supplies, and a color reference chart. A background stand kit is a package containing two stands and a collapsible background pole in a carrying case. This is set up to hold up to a 9′ roll of seamless background paper. By having it available to collapse into a case, you can take it on location if you need to. Seamless background paper comes in 3 sizes: 4 1/2′, 9′, and some colors in 12′. Color samples are available to pick from and can be found at most photo and art supply stores.

A light boom stand is used to hold a light and soft box above a set to create an overhead light source. A color reference chart is used in the first photo of any shooting session to help get the color balance perfect by the numbers. Once the camera, background, and lights are set up, shoot a frame of the reference card with the proper exposure and color balance settings configured on the camera. This image can later be used in Adobe Photoshop to balance all of the following images shot under the same conditions.

Now it’s off the hardware store. Two sawhorses and a 4×8′ piece of 1/2″ plywood will make a good tabletop for setting up your products to shoot on. Anything less than 1/2″ thickness might bow in the middle and cause unnecessary problems with product arrangements. Some assorted-sized squeeze clamps are good to have on hand to hold backgrounds and cards. Also, a few pieces of white mount board or foam core can be useful and can be found at the local art store. You can use these as fill cards for both product shots and portraits. Fill cards are used to bounce the light onto the subject to help fill in the light from the strobes or tungsten lights.

Setting up a product photography studio similar to this should cost you well below $2,000 (not counting the camera, of course).

On the Computer
We’ll assume that you already have a computer loaded with the latest version of Photoshop. Color management has an important role in getting consistent results with your digital photography. It just can’t be ignored or turned off. Consider what color space you want to work in as your photograph travels through it’s workflow route. To make this simple for right now, go to Edit>Color Settings to open the Color Settings dialog. Under the Settings pop-up menu, scroll to the North American Prepress option. This will set up most of the settings for good, clean digital photography. Change the color space from sRGB to Adobe RGB (1998) in the RGB pop-up menu in the Working Spaces section. This is a good all-around space for digital photography when having to go to both print and Web from the same images.

If you’re strictly creating photos for Web, then sRGB might be the best choice. It’s based on what the average color monitor is set up for. If you were only creating photos to be converted to CMYK, ColorMatch RGB is a good choice for that. Whichever space you choose, lock it in to preserve profiles and you can then relax and just concentrate on shooting good photos. Think of it as a set-it-and-forget-it approach as long as the color is set from the beginning. The color profile, which determines the formula in how the color is reproduced, will be tagged to the file as it moves along to different applications.

Get Shooting
Time to shoot a photo. Pro photographers have a little saying they like to use when it comes to equipment and taking photographs: “It’s not the camera, but the two feet standing behind it that really maters.” With today’s digital camera automation, it’s easy for a well-trained graphic artist to pick up a camera and get some good images right from the start. Perfecting the craft of good digital photography will come later as you spend time shooting in the studio.

The first big rule of professional studio photography: If you’re looking for quality and continuity between multiple photos, shoot RAW files. If you’re thinking good enough is good enough and you don’t want the extra hassle, you’re being shortsighted on the big picture. It’s not just good composition and lighting that makes a good studio photo; it’s a good file processing workflow procedure that’s predictable and repeatable.

Second rule: If you want to take advantage of Photoshop’s incredible power to process multiple files at once, you’re going to have to start moving away from the “Auto” setting on your camera. All digital SLRs have the ability to create a custom white balance of the set by shooting a white card and locking in the color temperature. All the following images will then be the exact same color balance. If the camera is set to “Auto White Balance,” the color can be influenced by the dominant color the camera is pointing at. If all the images are slightly different, you’ll see it when they’re lined up next to each other.

In addition to a custom white balance set in the camera, you can also shoot the color reference chart that we mentioned earlier in the first frame of the photo shoot. All the RAW images can be opened at once in the Photoshop Camera Raw dialog. Click on the frame with the color chart so that it’s featured in the preview window. Click the Select All button so all the frames are selected along the left vertical column of images. Click on the White Balance tool in the Camera Raw’s toolbar and click on the gray swatch of the color reference chart in the image. All the other selected images will then be updated with the same color balance. This makes a big difference at press time if you’re shooting a small catalog to have the consistency in color by the numbers.

Proper exposure is another important part of the process. Digital photography files don’t like to be overexposed. One of the many reasons to shoot RAW files is the ability to adjust the exposure without damaging the dynamic range of the image. To maintain detail in the color white in the final 8-bit file, white should not be any brighter than 240–245 on your 0–255 range of RGB information (with 0 being pure black and 255 being pure white). Black with detail should fall between 20–25. Learning how to interpret a proper exposure by reading the histogram is a skill that develops with time.

Keep Learning
See if there are any local classes or workshops in your area that teach basic studio lighting. Remember, you have both height and width with a photograph. It’s up to the photographer to create the illusion of depth by lighting. Once the basic studio is established, a little lighting instruction and lots of practice will start to yield some quality digital photography in a short time.

Some of My Favorite Picks for Starting a Studio
Here are some suggestions for products and brand names for you to check out while you’re building your studio. I’ve also included some of my favorite online shopping resources. Keep your budget in mind when you’re out shopping; some higher-end equipment can be very pricey, and your budget could get out of control before you know it. And don’t forget to start a relationship with your local photography shop. They can be a valuable asset to you whenever you have any questions or need advice.

Online Shopping
B&H Photo: www.bhphotovideo.com
Calumet Photographic: www.calumetphoto.com
Samy’s Camera: www.samys.com

Cameras
Canon EOS 30D with 17–85mm lens: www.usa.canon.com
Fuji FinePix S3 Pro with 18–70mm lens: www.fujifilm.com
Nikon D70s with 18–70mm lens: www.nikonusa.com

Tripods and Heads
Bogen: www.bogenimaging.us
Gitzo: www.gitzo.com
Slik: www.slik.com

Tungsten Lights
Lowel: www.lowel.com
Photogenic: www.photogenicpro.com
Smith-Victor: www.smithvictor.com

Strobe Lights
Bowens: www.bowens.co.uk
Dyna-Lite: www.dynalite.com
Photogenic: www.photogenicpro.com

Lighting Accessories—Soft Boxes, Umbrellas,
Boom Stands, and Background Stands
Chimera Lighting: www.chimeralighting.com
Photoflex: www.photoflex.com
Westcott: www.fjwestcott.com

Radio Slave Sync Units
PocketWizard Plus Kit: www.pocketwizard.com
Quantum Radio Slave 4i Kit: www.qtm.com

Color Reference Cards
GreytagMacbeth ColorChecker Chart: www.gretagmacbeth.com
QP Card: www.qpcard.com
WhiBal Reference Card: www.whibal.com

Before Photoshop’s Photomerge, photographers only had the option of using specialized software programs designed for creating interactive panoramic VR to stitch images together. Photoshop can make it much easer for basic stitching projects.

The first challenge is to determine the correct exposure and white balance. Don ‘t use any automatic setting on your camera. If the focus, exposure, or white balance is set on auto, the camera will slightly shift the focal point, exposure, and color to reflect what it’s pointing at. As you aim the camera from one area to the next, the changing exposure will make the merged images look splotchy. If you’re photographing during the day, set the white balance to daylight or cloudy. For more critical color, do a custom white balance of the area you’re shooting.

Handling the camera

You can hold the camera vertically for horizontal panoramas to capture more top-to-bottom height if needed. Remember, you can always make it as wide as you want by taking more photos from left to right. Each image needs to have about a one-third overlap of the scene with the next image. Overlapping too much or too little makes it harder to get seamless stitching.

When shooting, try to keep the camera as level as possible. Aligning the horizon of the scene with the centerline of the camera viewfinder will help keep the scene level. Do a practice run, looking through the camera and viewing the scene, stopping at each area to shoot. This will help you determine what’s in the scene that will help as a guide to line up against. Using a tripod will give you cleaner overlapping images. The more level and even the photographs, the better the stitching.

Exposure

The proper exposure should be a balance of the brightest and darkest areas in the full subject area. For example, if the area on the far left of the scene is showing a proper exposure reading of 1/125 at f:8, and the exposure on the right side is reading 1/125 at f:11, set the camera on manual exposure at 1/125 at f:8-1/2.If you’re shooting several attempts of the same subject, shoot a blank image at the beginning and end of each run. This will make it easier to determine where to start and stop the process in Photoshop. Photomerge is not as sophisticated as high-end stitching software because it won’t bend perspective with changing relationships of close-up and faraway subjects. A little trial and error in shooting will let you know what will work well and what won’t.

The Photomerge dialog

Once the scenes are photographed, gather the images in a folder and view them in the Adobe Bridge (or the File Browser in Photoshop CS). Holding the Shift key, click on the first and then the last file in the sequence to select all of them. If they need to be rotated, do it now by clicking the appropriate rotate icon at the top right of the Bridge. This will make the stitching process easier to manage. From the Bridge menu bar, choose Tools>Photoshop>Photomerge (in Photoshop CS, choose Automate>Photomerge from the File Browser menu bar). The images will open in the Photomerge dialog.

If the images are shot correctly, Photomerge will automatically arrange them for stitching. Sometimes, even though they were shot correctly, Photoshop may not be able to stitch them. When this happens, you can click on each image with the Select Image tool (A) in the Photomerge dialog and adjust them individually. Try to line up the images by looking at the overlapped areas. When the two images get close, they’ll automatically snap together (as long as the Snap to Image option at the right-hand side of the dialog is checked on).

The Perspective option in the Photomerge dialog bends the panorama into an hourglass shape that can create a much better natural view of the scene. If the images aren’t blending smoothly, try clicking on the Advanced Blending option. You can also keep all the images as layers so they can be adjusted if there’s a problem after they’ve been stitched.

Back to Photoshop

Once you’re happy with your panorama in the Photomerge dialog, click OK, and Photoshop will stitch the images together. In many cases, the tops and bottoms of the images may not line up perfectly so you’ll have to crop those transparent areas for the final image. If there are any bad seams in the stitching, use the Healing Brush or the new CS2 Spot Healing Brush to smooth them out.

When you’re finished cropping the image, you can adjust it just like any other image. But remember that panorama file sizes are much larger because you’re using several images together. Many inkjet printers allow you to use a long sheet of paper in the manual tray to create longer prints. Next time you’re out taking photos, try a few practice shots to get the feel of creating stitched panoramas, then you’ll be ready when that special scene suddenly appears. And don’t forget: Always carry your camera with you…

Jim DiVitale is an Atlanta-based photographer and instructor specializing in digital photography. His clients include Mizuno USA, Carter’s, Genuine Part Company, IBM, TEC America, Scientific-Atlanta, and Coca-Cola. Check out his website at www.DiVitalePhoto.com.

The following tutorial is courtesy of Photoshop User magazine

This particular ad called for an image of three bottles with water splashing from all directions. We constructed a small, plastic-lined set out of wood with a small sheet of blue Plexiglas set into the bottom for the background. To provide the splashing water, we used about $15 worth of clear plastic tubing and a connecting splitter that divided the line into three separate tubes. We hot-glued small wood blocks to the backs of the three bottles and then glued them to the Plexiglas background. The camera was set up overhead and we then locked everything down tightly to help with the multiple shot registration.

The set is lit with two strobe light units at low power to create a short flash duration. The more power firing through the flash unit, the longer the flash duration, causing the water to look blurred. That water is fast-moving and a little blur makes it look real compared to the razor-sharp look of an acrylic splash mold. We then poured a quart of water into the tubing and an electric air compressor shot a blast of water out of the tubes, spreading over the three bottles. It’s a hit-or-miss undertaking to catch the water in the right position, but we took several images with the water moving around differently in every one. We also took one perfect shot with the bottles spritzed with water droplets and added it to the stack of images. Then, all of the additional splash images can be combined into one perfect splash.

STEP 1:

Select and open five of the best images from the File Browser. Choose one as your anchor Background image and four others that have interesting patterns of splashing water in areas where the background image is lacking.

While pressing the Shift key (to keep the images in register), use the Move tool (V) to drag additional splash images over to the Background image.

STEP 2:

One layer at a time, check the registration by reducing the layer Opacity to 50% (press the 5 key) and then pressing Command-I (PC: Control-I) to invert the layer. If it’s in registration, the overlapping part of the image will gray out as the positive and 50% negative come together. If it’s out of position, it will look embossed.

Using the Arrow keys, move the layer a pixel or two up or down until the registration looks correct. Press Command-I (Control-I) to invert the layer back to positive and press the zero (0) key to bring the Opacity back to 100%.

Do this step for each layer except the Background layer.

STEP 3:

Add a black (hide all) layer mask to each layer (not the Background layer) by pressing the Option key (PC: Alt key) and clicking in the Add Layer Mask icon (circle in a square at the bottom of the Layers palette). You can temporarily disable/enable the mask by Shift-clicking on the layer mask thumbnail, which lets you view the entire layer to locate the best splashing water.

When working with the layer mask, use a soft brush (B) set to a low opacity (up in the Options Bar) and paint with white (Foreground color) to reveal the layer. If you’ve painted too much, press the X key to switch your Foreground color to black and you can slowly remove the layer by painting with black.

STEP 4:

Repeat the previous step for each of the additional splashing water layers. Then brush water into multiple areas, making the splash bigger than any of the single splash images alone.

STEP 5:

Add a clean bottle image to the top of the layer stack and check it for registration as in Step Two. Next, add a black layer mask to conceal the layer, and then carefully paint on the mask with white to “reveal” the labels.

STEP 6:

The last thing to do is remove the three clear tubes coming in from the top of the image. Click on the bottom anchor image in the Layers palette to make it active. Select the Clone Stamp tool (S) from the Toolbox and using a soft brush at 50% Opacity, gradually clone the tubes out of the image. It’s best to build up the density by slowly sampling (Option-Click [PC: Alt-click]) the area to clone from several areas. This keeps the soft water motion looking consistent throughout the image.

FINAL

We added some text and here’s the final ad. It amazes me how an image like this can be constructed so easily from individual registered images…with digital capture and Photoshop CS, everybody wins.