Product photography - why is this so hard, part II

Hello peeps. Yes, I'm back. I'm sure you were waiting anxiously for Part II, right? Of course you were ;) Today's fun topic on how to get product photos that don't suck is...

Camera Settings

This one I cannot stress enough. RTFM. For those not in the computer industry, that means "Read the Friendly Manual". Um, yeah. :) Dig out your camera's manual and read all of it. If you can't find it, look it up online - most manuals are either posted to the manufacturer's website, or in PDF form on some other "electronics manuals" sites. Heck, I even found the manual for my 20 year old TI-86 calculator online, so your digital camera manual is there somewhere, I bet.

Figure out how to turn off the flash. A side benefit of this was that I learned how to turn on red-eye reduction for taking pics of people so they don't look like the devil.

Three other things that will be important here are setting the white balance and exposure and learning how to toggle your camera to the Macro setting for taking closeup shots. This is especially true for small items, like jewelry.

And no, you don't need a super-fancy, expensive Nikon digital SLR camera with interchangeable lenses. Unless you are a photographer and know what to do with that kind of power. In which case, you're probably not reading this post anyway and should be writing one yourself about how really to take great pictures.

My own camera is a tiny, 4 year old, point and shoot 5 megapixel Canon PowerShot. It was state of the art at the time, maybe $250, and now they don't even make that model. I bought it because it's really small and it's red. Not because it had any fancy features. It does have the settings I mentioned above, which are all I need, to get decent shots of my jewelry.

The very first thing I learned was to use the macro setting. It's usually depicted by a small tulip. It helps you get closeups of small objects. Obviously, if you're photographing room-sized sculptures, you wouldn't use this, but for small things like jewelry it works wonders. I'm not sure from a technical standpoint what it's doing inside my camera when I set it, but I do observe that I can take really great, non-blurry closeup shots of items in this mode.

Setting the "white balance" was key for my pictures. You're telling the camera to adjust for your lighting and get to a more true white tone, rather than that bright yellow tone you get from indoor lighting. My camera allows me to set it and save it, and it applies only when I'm in Macro mode so that it doesn't affect my people and dog pictures. It has made a world of difference for me.

If your shots are still a bit on the dark side, you can play around with the exposure, which I think tells the camera how long to leave the shutter open so it takes in more light. (Again, the real photogs will correct me if I'm wrong.) This can brighten your photos considerably. Play around with the setting. Too much will lead to washed out, glare-filled photos, but just a little extra can work wonders. I keep mine on either the +1/3 or +2/3 setting depending on whether it's dark or light out.

Some people also swear by a tripod. If you have shaky hands, and your macro shots are coming out blurry, this is a good investment. I got a really cheap, flexible screw-on universal tripod at Amazon for $6. I am not kidding. And it works great. Lately, though, I haven't really needed it. I either use my desk, or both hands to steady the camera. Or I just take more pictures and discard the blurry ones. Because digital pictures are essentially free, right?

Super-secret tip (ok, not really): You might want to invest in an extra rechargeable battery for your camera. All of these photo sessions cause me to go through replacement batteries like nobody's business and it's a real bummer when you have 5 new pieces to shoot and post online but no working camera. Amazon is a great place for those replacement batteries too. (And no they don't pay me to say that!)

Well, I hope that helped, or at least was marginally entertaining for you. Stay tuned for tomorrow's fascinating post on Staging, aka "what's with the giant bead in that necklace"?

And please share your fave camera settings tips in the comments! Because we could all stand to learn something new to improve our photography, right?