Shooting images for blogs are more popular these days. Before you blog your photos there are a couple of things that you should be aware of:
The first one and most important one is Light. Its all about the light !
There are three different types of light directions – side light/top light (any light that is approx 90 degrees to the camera) back light and front light.
Back light simply place the object between yourself and the window. This method will require a little EV compensation as the product will reproduce darker due to the nature of the light coming directly into the lens.
Front light put your back to the light source and point the camera at the object !
Side light is when you place the object at right angles to the source.
Top light where the object is below the light source. The most popular is incandescent (tungsten) lighting which is yellow compared to daylight. It has a value of 3400 to about 2800 Kelvin. Daylight is about 5500 Kelvin.
So if you shooting indoors just be aware of what lights are on . In other words as a rule of thumb don’t mix lighting sources and stick to either tungsten or daylight.
On there own the camera will automatically adjust the light balance, and it will look neutral. If you mixed the two sources, then you’re going to see the colour contrasts as discussed.
For this tutorial we are going to keep things simple. We are going to use natural light, which is called daylight from an open source the window.
There are two ways we can use this light, we can use it as back light or sidelight.
Daylight has full CRI value. Which means its full spectrum light. Its the most natural looking as it comes from the sun. It has the best colour reproduction as well and is a bench mark for all other light sources. So if you’re shooting a lot of products for your blog this is helpful to know.
Bring your product to the window put it on a background. It could be a white table. Preferably white for products. consider paper backgrounds, fabric and so on…..
Now we have to deal with exposure if we use sidelight. This is a little easier then back light. The simplest way is to bump up or down the EV value. Depending if the exposure is light or dark. For back light you will need to compensate with your EV value more.
Regarding equipment most people have an phone with a camera and for most images that’s fine .
If you want to invest in an camera, go for an SLR camera with interchangeable lenses.
I suggest a 50 mm prime lens to start with as its the cheapest and has good reproduction being a fixed lens. One tip with fixed lens, you can shot at wide apertures in AV mode to make a shallow depth of field which makes for a cool effect.
Hope this helps and please see sample images.
Back light images:-
As we discussed earlier day light is more blue so we kept this feel as it added to the value of the images. However we can neutralize it as well in post production or even make it warmer !
That is subjective to the feel of your images .
Have fun.
