How to Shoot Comercial Product Shots on a Budget

Commercial product photography and videography is a lot easier than it may seem.

Indy Mogul is known for their indie budget-friendly tips and tricks to creating great looking footage be it inspiration, interviewing professionals, or in this video's case, walking us through a video shoot. While this video is concentrating on product videography, the lighting principles for light placement, size, and angle all apply to both video and photo. 

Two things I like about this video are, first of all, while they bring in a high-end product videographer, they use a relatively cheap Canon 6D Mk II instead of some crazy cinema rig, reminding us that you don't need anything particularly fancy in order to get great images. 

The other thing I adore from this video is its emphasis on just playing around with the lighting. Yes, there are some specific lighting techniques that they use but they play around a lot, something I feel we need more of in our photography: play. Set something up and then try playing around with it by adding smoke, or a gel, or turning lights off and on and seeing the effect you get.

If this sort of video interests you, we sell a tutorial on getting high end product shots here on our own store: The Hero Shot

David J. Fulde's picture

David J. Fulde photographs people. Based in Toronto, ON, he uses bold lighting and vibrant colours to tell people's stories. His work in the film industry lends a cinematic energy to his photographs and makes for an always-colourful studio -- whether he's shooting portraits, fashion, or beauty.

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5 Comments

Save budget by using one m(sry had to be that guy just once).

I see what you did their

Thank you David for bringing that interesting topic on.
From the starters, good studio with enough space and a black wall could be a bit of luxury in itself. MF camera with a close enough focusing distance could compensate a bit for smaller space. There is always a catch, I afraid. The intended result is never good, cheap and fast at the same time.
My 5c.

ComMercial has 2 Ms.