Lighting for product photos
Lighting decides more about a product photograph than the camera does. The same phone, pointed at the same product, gives a flat, grey snapshot or a photograph a buyer trusts, depending on where the light comes from, how big it is and what colour it is. You do not need much equipment to control all three. You do need to understand what each one does, and that is most of what this guide is about, followed by three set-ups that cover nearly every product.
The examples are real client photographs, shown with permission: the before as it was shot, the after as it was delivered.
Soft light and hard light
The size of a light, compared with the product, decides how soft it is. A bare bulb or the sun is small compared with almost anything, so it makes sharp-edged shadows and small, bright highlights. A window, a softbox, a diffusion panel or a white wall the light is bounced off is large, so it wraps round the product: shadows fade gradually and highlights spread into broad, soft shapes.
Most products look best in soft light, because it shows their shape and colour without harsh shadows hiding detail. Two things make a light softer: making it bigger (diffuse it, or bounce it off something large and white) and moving it closer. Moving a light further away makes it smaller relative to the product, so it gets harder as well as dimmer.
Hard light still has uses. A small, hard light skimming across a surface brings out texture, and a hard point of light is what makes a cut stone sparkle.
Direction
- From the side, slightly in front (about 45 degrees round from the camera): the standard main light. It lights the front of the product and leaves a gradual shadow down one side, which shows its shape.
- From directly beside: more contrast, and the most texture. Good for fabric, leather and wood; too dramatic for most packaging.
- From behind, through white card or paper: for glass and clear liquids, which show their edges as dark lines against the light.
- From the camera (a built-in flash or a ring light): flat, with a shadow directly behind the product and a bright reflection in anything glossy. Avoid it for products.
- From above: for flat lays, with a reflector or a second light to stop the shadows falling straight down into folds.
Colour, and never mixing it
Light has a colour. Household bulbs are usually warm (yellow-orange), daylight is cooler and changes through the day, and LED panels are often adjustable. The camera can correct for one colour of light; it cannot correct for two at once. A product lit by a window on one side and a ceiling bulb on the other has a warm side and a cool side, and no single correction makes both right. So pick one kind of light, turn everything else off, and use identical lights if you use more than one.
When you buy lights, look for a stated colour rendering figure (CRI or TLCI) of 90 or above. Cheap LEDs with a low figure can make some colours, reds and skin tones especially, look wrong in a way no white balance fixes.
Set the white balance from a grey card or a white card in your light, at the start of every session, and keep it fixed for the batch. The ring below was shot on grey card under flat light; it shows how far a colour cast and flat lighting move a piece from how it looks in the hand.
Set-up one: one light and a reflector
This is the set-up to start with, and many professional product photographs use nothing more.
- Put the product on a sweep of white card, a little forward of the curve.
- Put your light (a window, or a softbox or LED panel with diffusion) to one side, slightly in front, at about the height of the product or a little above.
- Stand a sheet of white card or foam board on the other side, just out of shot, angled to bounce light back into the shadow side.
- Move the reflector closer for lighter shadows, further away for more shape.
If the shadows are still too dark, add a second reflector in front, low down, or use a bigger one. If the light falls off too quickly across the product, move the light further back and make it larger with more diffusion.
Set-up two: a key light and a fill light
The same as set-up one, with a second light in place of the reflector. Set the second (fill) light to about half the power of the main (key) light, or move it further away, so it lifts the shadows without removing them. A fill as bright as the key makes the product look flat again. Use identical lights so the colour matches.
Set-up three: key, fill and background
The studio set-up for products on white. Key and fill light the product as above; a third light (or a pair) lights only the background, from behind or beside the product, so the background is brighter than the product and comes out white. It needs space between the product and the background, and black card to stop the background light reaching the lens. The guide to pure white backgrounds covers it in detail.
Even light on large products
Light gets dimmer quickly with distance: at twice the distance from a light, a surface receives a quarter as much. With the light close to a large product, one end is lit much more brightly than the other. The fix is to move the light further away and make it bigger, so the difference in distance between the near end and the far end matters less, or to add a second light or reflector at the far end.
The tote above shows the problem: lit from one side in a white cove, the light falls away across the bag towards the dark curtain, and the colours dull with it. It was cut out on white and the colours brought back evenly.
Dark and shiny products
A black, glossy product does not show its shape through shading; it shows it through what it reflects. A small light makes a small, hard highlight and leaves the rest of the surface black. A large, soft light close to the product makes a long, even highlight that runs down each curve and shows the form. Put the light where its reflection falls along the edges you want to show, and use black card to keep a dark line where a contrast helps.
The suitcase was shot side-on in a cove of white boards. In the delivered file the light across the shell is evened out, so the highlights describe the shape rather than the set.
Glass works the other way round: light it from behind or from the sides through white card, against a darker background, so its edges show as lines.
Common lighting faults
| What you see | Likely cause, and the fix |
|---|---|
| Hard, dark shadow beside the product | Light too small or too far away: diffuse it, move it closer, add a reflector |
| One side warm, the other cool | Two kinds of light: turn one off |
| Product looks flat, no shape | Light from the camera, or fill as bright as key: move the key to the side, reduce the fill |
| Bright spot on a glossy surface | A small light reflected: use a bigger, diffused light, or move it so the reflection falls elsewhere |
| One end brighter than the other | Light too close to a large product: move it back and enlarge it |
| Grey, dull colours | Underexposed, or white balance off: expose for the product and set white balance from a card |
What lighting can leave to editing
Good light gets the product right: its shape, its colour, its texture, and detail in its brightest and darkest parts. What it does not have to get right is everything around the product. Uneven background tone, the edge of the set, a slightly warm cast and a highlight a little bigger than you wanted are all routine edits. Burnt-out highlights and shadows with no detail are not, because the information is not in the file.
If you light well and would rather not edit at all, send us the files: our cut-outs place the product on white or any background, and retouching evens the light and colour across a range.
Real client images, shown with permission, from the archive of Product Packshot, the Essex product photography studio of Picarm co-owner David Forcina.