Product lighting has one governing principle: the larger the light source is relative to the subject, the softer the shadows. A bare bulb is small and produces hard, ugly shadows; the same bulb bounced off a wall becomes a large source and produces gentle ones.
The Basic Setup
Key light — your main source, placed to one side at roughly 45° and slightly above the product. Options in ascending cost:
- A large window with indirect daylight. Free and excellent.
- A desk lamp bounced off a white wall or ceiling, which converts a small source into a large one.
- A lamp shot through tracing paper, baking parchment or a white sheet placed 20–40 cm from the light.
- An actual softbox, if you shoot often enough to justify it.
Fill — a white card, foam board or sheet of paper on the opposite side, angled to bounce light back into the shadows. This single free addition does more for product photos than a second lamp.
That's the whole setup for most products. Add a third light behind or above only when you need to separate a dark product from a dark background.
Practical Rules
- Move the light closer to make it softer and the falloff faster; move it further for more even but harder light.
- Higher key light produces a shadow that falls behind and below the product, which usually looks natural. A light too low makes shadows climb up the background.
- One light source, one shadow direction. Mixing a window with a ceiling lamp creates crossed shadows that look amateur — turn the room lights off.
- Never mix colour temperatures. Daylight plus a warm bulb produces a colour cast that's difficult to correct. Use one type of light.
Controlling Reflections
Glossy products reflect whatever surrounds them, including you and your phone.
- What you see reflected is what you must change, not the light itself. Move the reflection by moving the light or the camera angle.
- Use large diffused sources: they reflect as a soft, pleasant band rather than a bright dot.
- Build a white surround — a box or card walls — so the product reflects clean white rather than a cluttered room.
- Shoot from slightly above or off-axis to keep your own reflection out.
- For glass and highly polished metal, a light tent (or a simple box lined with paper) solves most problems at once.
Consistency Across a Catalog
This matters as much as any single photo:
- Mark positions with tape: where the product sits, where the light stands, where the camera is.
- Lock your settings — same exposure, white balance and lens for the whole set. Auto white balance drifting between shots means hours of matching later.
- Shoot the whole set in one session if you can. Daylight changes; lamp positions get bumped.
- Process as a batch with identical crop, background and compression settings.
The Finishing Step
Even a good setup rarely gives a perfectly pure white background straight from camera. Lift the background to pure white afterwards, or remove and replace it if the marketplace requires exact values — then crop square, resize and compress the whole set together so every listing tile looks like it belongs to the same shop.