If you read part one of this tutorial about product photography using gel filters, its your time to move forward to part II.

In this part we’ll learn how to use the gel filter set and the DIY small flash grid

So get in and see how you can take those pictures too!!!

This is the list of stuff I used in this section:

• Products to photograph.
• A white foam board, costs about 2$ for a 70cm*100cm piece, will be great as a reflector too.
• Two of camera flash units.
• DIY gel filter holder and some gels.
• DIY grid for small flashes.
• Camera.
• Good luck!!!

This is the setup usd me to take those photographs, it takes 2 minutes to set:

What you actually see here is a normal chair that holds a white foam. Under the chair I put a Canon 550EX flash with the DIY gel filter holder set to narrow beam as using the manual zoom option 105mm, that will get the narrow blue light behind the camera instead of a blue splash. On the camera right there is a tripod that holds my Canon 580EXII with a DIY grid for small flash. That’s all 2 minutes and you get ready to shoot those great looking photographs. Ahh almost forgot , my 40D camera is set to Iso 200,1/125 sec,f/7.1, and both flashes are set to 1/4 full power.

Lets get going, and see some samples of what you can achieve with that simple setup!!!

Share your thoghts with as and place your comments here!!!

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The one who know me ,that I love running.

In this set I’ll show you how I took that shoe product photograph.

You’ll have to forgive me that my Adidas shoes aren’t clean and new ,as I bought them two days before the shootout and had to test them for two runs.My bottom line is that they are very very very light.And I don’t recommend you to run with those pair of shoes during the winter,cause it might freeze your toes (mine froze…),but lets talk business.

If you sell shoes you’ll probably want to take some good photographs of  your merchandise to upload to the web and try to sell it online.Whether its for your email use, online store or your Ebay store,You’ll need a good picture to drive the visitors to buy the shoe!

You can get into the video  in the link below,but to make it simple,here are some tips about this shoe photography setup:

Here is my second video,about product photography.You may well see that I took the shot with very simple setup,and it took me less than 10 minutes to make that picture work!

The video is a real one by one timeline of the shootout itself:

Shoe Photography – keep in simple from diyphotography on Vimeo.

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Taking lightning photographs are actually surprisingly very very easy!For such kind of photographs (I accidentally,on the way took this one) you almost don’t need any pro equipment at all.

Get in and read my easy and simple tips on how make that simple diy photography of stormy lightning.

First of all I have a disclaimer : this photo was take hand held in my back yard,while I’m in my house, so it looks OK, but if you want to make much better pictures, follow those tips.

General tips for shooting great lightning photographs:

1. Camera – really any digital camera with manual exposure could take great printable lightning photographs, ANY CAMERA.
2. Wider is better – As many aspects pf landscape photography most of lightnings photographs you see online where made with a wide angle lens, go as wide as you can!
3. Tripod – As you’ll read next you are about to take long exposures, in that case you’ll have to put your camera on a good tripod. Although I took the picture above hand held, it will be much better if you use a tripod!
4. Exposure (part I) – You should aim for long exposures as possible. A long exposure will be anything over 5 second, above 5 seconds you’ll be able to take those photographs.In fact you’ll better aim for more than that.Taking a 20 seconds exposure will let you put in one frame more that one lightning stroke and if you go for a minute of more you’ll be able to record an entire storm.You’ll have to remember that the longer your exposure will be , the better your chances to get more lightnings into your frame! You could do it with shorter times, but 5 seconds will be a minimum time.
5. Exposure (part I) – if you are shooting in the dark you could go for something about f/11. If there is some daylight for will have to go even more to f/18-22. As you want less ambient light in your frame (In case you want your photo to be dark ).
6. Guess – If  you know there is going to be a happy stormy evening, take a look at the sky before you start to take those pictures. Have a good idea where the storm is going to come from, before you lock your camera and tripod.
7. Location – If you know the weather and have some time, plan your location somewhere open and out of the city if you want to get a clean frame. If you want your frame to be with some urban touches, you could  find a location where your frame will  contain some urban touch.
8. Safety – You know , there is that thing about lightning 100000000000000000000000volts punch. Read some instructions about safety before you run out to catch them.
9. Staying dry – If you decide to shoot outside, think about somewhere dry and safe of rain. You wouldn’t want your new Canon 5DMKII to get wet so early…

Have fun, When you’ll get your first lightning recorded in a frame its such a joy!!!after the first one start you work on improvements .

If you are interested in weather photography you might want to check that site for more tips and stuss

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Hey,

I saw a great tutorial in Stefan’s site (you can get the link in my favorites).He have been shooting products (hand made great looking funny dolls ).Stefan uses a professional studio and pro flashes for his work and you can see the diargrams of some of his studio sessions in his blog. I this piece I tried to get as close to his job, using small of camera flashes for this product photography. So get in and learn how to do it on the budget!

This is the list of things I used in this section:

• Products to photograph.
• Black metallic platform ,I use in this site an IKEA magnetic dashboard, but you can improvise with almost everything.
• Two of camera flash units.
• DIY gel filter holder and some gels.
• DIY grid for small flashes.
• Camera.
• Good attitude!

Let see the setup:

Sorry for it being a little dark, but you can see is that:

• On tripod there is a flash (canon 550EX) with my DIY grid for small flash on a tripod aimed at the product I have to take picture of, set to 1/4 power.
• On the floor beneath the black metallic platform I had a Canon 580EXII with my DIY gel filter holder with some colored gels, set to a narrow light using the 105mm manual zoom .power 1/4.
• You can add a small white reflector to control the image contrast (setup right side).
• Camera: Canon 40D  f/7.1, Iso  200, 1/125 sec.

Yep that simple as that!

Here are some more photos I took with that simple setup!

Tips:

1. You can see in some of the pictures that the background looks different,that because I changed the manual zoom settings to wider than 105mm.Try to experience the background changes by controlling the flash zoom in and out.
2. You could change the gelled flash output power so you’ll get a brighter or darker background.
3. Change once in a while the gels filters and find out what color suits you best.

If you have other tips or want to show as your own examples,please share!!!

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A grid is the light modifier that you’ll use when you want to focus or narrow your flash beam of light, and let it be concentrated in one strong beam.There

is a way to narrow and control the flash light beam by using the manual zoom angle control (this option is available with the Canon 550EX flash unit and in many other flashes) but with the DIY grid you’ll be able to really control its width and power to a maximum.

This project is an easy one and all you’ll need for it is:

• Piece of bristol paper ( you could use any type,I used a folder that I got in a Google convention).
• About 40-50 straws.
• Ruler.
• Canon 550EX…
• 20 minutes

Let start:

The first steps will be to take measurements of the Canon 550EX speedlite width and height:

measuring the 550EX width

measuring the 550EX height

Now you’ll have to mark your bristol shit with the dimensions you have just took.If you are doing the DIY grid for the Canon 550EX speedlite it should look something like that:

You’ll have a piece of bristol that will be marked like the image above.If we see there are 5 segments (from left to right) flash :height – width – height- width- spare to glue it up.

Make the last segment shorter than the first segment!

Now you will have to cut the straws .Take in mind that the longer you cut them, you’ll narrower beam and concentrated light source.try to cut them as equal as possible as you can.After you cut the straws you’ll get a pile of short straws.I tried to keep their length about 2cm-3cm:

The next part is the more “difficult” part and most “time consuming”, gluing it all together:

you’ll have to glue one line of glue,order the little straws ,add another glue line and place the straws again and again as you get to the height you need.

After gluing the straws to the height needed its time to glue it all together, glue the sides of the bristol piece and the sides of the straws, close it all together with some tape and let it dry.If you did it the right way you’ll have a simple and easy DIY grid for small flashes.

Keep in mind that you can adjust this tutorial for any flash model that you have, just change the widths and heights.

Enjoy and share your thoughts with us!

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Hey

There is a trend to make subs for this piece from on of the movies about Hitler.

As I tried to do some basic video editing on my baby boy Eitan movies,I decided to give another version for that piece.

I hope you’ll enjoy!

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Hey you guys!in this post I’ll instruct you how to shoot very good shots of your product using just one small camera flash ,in this case I used a Canon 580EXII in a photek brolly which is the most powerful lighting modifier on budget that I know!I use here a 46 inch brolly (the nick name for an umbrella softbox).I don’t remember how much i cost me a couple of years ago,when my friend Chen went to the B&H and bought this piece for me (thanks Chen).

So get in and see the rest of this tutorial and more examples!I have two variations for this product photography setup : in the first setup I use only the brolly, while in the second one I add a reflector on the opposite side of the brolly light for some more fill light.As you’ll soon see the brolly gives a very big light source and therefor a very good light quality!

So this is the first set:

The set details:

• Camera: Canon 40D set to – iso500,1/125th sec , f1/7.1.This is my basic start for most of the time when I use a brolly or a light modifier that as some loose of light.
• Light: a Canon 580EXII set to 1/4th full power in a big and nice 46” photek brolly (there are cheaper brands on Ebay if you want to start with something else).
• Setup background: a piece of paper roll taped to the door (if you tape it to the wall get in mind you’ll have to paint the wall every time you take some pictures…).

This is it,lets what we have:

As I used a big brolly,the shadows are relatively small,but if the annoys you,here is the second set where I added a white foam board as a reflector:

If you’ll try hard you’ll see that the shadows on the products left is smaller.on the shoe point the shadows beneath the shoe are less visible:

Well this is all,I hope you got something out of this tutorial.

Please if you have some suggestions,feel free to put your comments below.

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We all know how important it is to get a good picture in order to get a good selling page in your eBay.com store.

A good picture will generate more traffic to you store and will probably will get you  better conversion rate,that means in simple words MORE MONEY!!!

Here I’ll cover the basics of how to shot a good picture with a low budget studio equipment.One light tent and three flash units might cost you less than  90$.Get this and you’ll be ready for your eBay product photography homebased studio.

In this session I’ll explain you guys here how to use a simple cheap light tent a 80cm big for your photographs to put on eBay.This a relatively big light tent to use,but it will get you great results for also medium size products as well as small ones.This box costs about 20USD maybe less,so it will be a wast not to get one if you shoot more that a couple of products .In this set I used three flash lights,I use Canon based system but there are some less expensive alternatives on the net for flashes,some starts about 20USD.That means you could get a great worth of value package for your product photography studio at about 80USD more or less.

So how I set up the set?Easy 5 minutes and you are done!!!

• Open the light tent (well that is easy).
• get the lights stand in rear,right and left side of the light tent.Manual mode.1/8 of maximum power.
• camera on tripod set on my favorite setting : iso400, 1/125sec,f/11.
• start shoot and and see how you need to change the settings in order to get better results.

This is what you’ll get just after 5 minutes of work.

In the first picture the left flash fired on a very low power,the result of that low power can be seen in less details on the product left side.One down side for this photograph is that you’ll have to photoshop out the less lightened part of the picture.

In the second eBay product photograph example , we set the left flash to fire.You can immediately can see the influence of that flash.There is still some photoshop to do to make that picture perfect.but its a good one for your eBay product photo.

Fine tuning will be done with photoshop and you are ready to publish it in your eBay online shop!

In addition to 5 minutes of photoshop maneuvers and you get a high quality eBay product photograph!

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Hey you all!

As most of my work is with small flashes I must bring you to this very talented Swedish photographer (Stockholm, Sweden) who is also a graphic designer.You can get to his site at this address .As I use small flashes in the tutorials you see in that site, Stefan is using “big” lights Profoto units if I read it right.The “big” lights can get you better results in many of the cases than the small lights,as the ad-ons you can work with the big light are much versatile than the one that you can get or DIY for the small light (not mentioning power and the light shape).

In Stefans blog and site you could get many tutorials , mainly about portrait photography,in those tutorials you’ll see detailed examples and diagrams for the shootouts he did.I really liked the product shootout that you can see in that link Lighting setup for Amigurumi product photography using only two lights!

I have to say that this tutorial really got me thinking on trying to get this nice result with the small flashes that I use for my product photography tutorials…So the first two things that I did after I read that tutorial by stefan is to DIY two honeycoms for my flashes, one circular shaped and on rectangle shape.

Stefan Tell

Enjoy the site by Stefan and see you soon with my next tutorial!

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Hey.

many times I see on the net good flash photography sites,but not great sites.This one is one of the best that I visited the last month and I do recommend you guys to check it up once in a while or register to its mailing list.

This is a site by David Tejada (if I got it right),and its moto is

“Small StrobesBig Results”

Well he do delivers.

So go and visit it ,I’m sure you’ll like some of the stuff he is talking about.

Site

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