Product Photography: help me learn?

As you might know, I have a website that sells lots of little fiddly things. These things can be difficult to take photos of. I've been doing OK at it, but I'd like to step up my game. Here's my setup:
Attachment 127986

I just purchased a Sony Alpha NEX-C3 16.2M Pixels, with the stock 18-55mm lens, and a 55-210mm lens.

The "white-box" is white tissue paper taped onto a clear tupperware, with white poster-board (matte) as the bottom/back. I bought two clamp-on light fixtures with 100W bulbs, the overhead florescent, and my work lights.

Lets start with an example that I wasn't happy with:
Attachment 127987

Which lens should I use?
Should I be far away and zoomed in, or close and zoomed out?
Generally what aperture/exposure strategy should I use?
Maybe my "white-box" sucks - what should I consider to improve it?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jondrums

Maybe my "white-box" sucks - what should I consider to improve it?

---

You're actually on the right track with your setup. You can use white butcher paper and a cardboard box to make a really easy/nice lightbox with what you have. Read this: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07...to-studio.html

As far as the shot goes, what aren't you happy with about it? To me it loks like your white balance is a bit off, and the ISO is set too high. If you get a small tripod you can get your ISO back to 100 or 200 and a lot of that noise should go away. I would kill your flourescents and the work lights so you only have one color of bulb.

You can for Nikon and Canon get a 50mm prime lens for under $100 that will give you surprisingly professional looking results, but I don't know if Sony has one yet. Otherwise I don't really think they are that bad.

Hope that helps.

You're supposed to be shooting through the lightbox to diffuse the light. Having them in front of the box shooting onto the product defeats the purpose. If you must shoot with a the lights facing the product I would bounce the light in to diffuse it instead of having bare bulbs blaring down on the product.

I would try to have all the lights the same color temp. Have one shining down from above and one right and left in front of the product but all still shooting through the lightbox. Remember that distance of lights changes the diffusion and power of the light. You can reduce shadows just by sliding a light back/forward a inches.

get a tripod, shoot low ISO, stop down your lens and get a remote trigger.

If your camera has it, you can use the 2 second timer delay built into your camera to save money on a remote trigger and never worry about losing it.