How to Do A Product Shot of a Manfrotto Ballhead

I enrolled in a photography class last fall. The class was good because, for one, I was able to interact with other photographers here in town and I was also able to see really good pictures by my classmates. Critiquing was also a great part and I was able to learn a lot from what my teachers and classmates had to say about my pictures.

One project for the class is to make photos using speedlites. So, I decided to do a product shot. This proved to be a very good exercise because it turned out to be not really that easy. I thought I'd just pop a speedlite on my camera then that's it, finished photo. But, I really wanted to do a very good presentation. I didn't want to do a bad picture since this technique might prove very useful in the future. If you are gonna sell a product on ebay.com, amazon.com, etc, you'd want to have a really good photo of your product, right?

My set up looks like this:

All speedlites were bare but I feathered the speedlite near the camera so it will light up the front of the ballhead just a little. This speedlite was primarily used to illuminate the background. I put a white reflector in front also so that the light coming from the rear speedlite will illuminate the ballhead. The left-right speedlites have a ratio of 4:1. I exposed for the ballhead and underexposed the camera so that the ballhead will be black. I set the flash exposure compensation to +1.

Here is the final photo:

ISO100, f/8, 1/20s, 50mm.

This ballhead is a Manfrotto 482 (This model has been replaced by the Manfrotto 492 ballhead). I hope this how-to will help those who would like to do their own product shot.

These are the things that I used for this product shot:

• 2 Canon 430EX-II speedlites
• Canon 7D with 50mm f/1.8
• Benro A-158EX tripod with BH1-M ballhead
• Photobasics reflector
• 2 white poster boards (for background and "floor")