Every once in a great while, I need to do a product shot. So, when I saw this easy, cheap, Mini Macro Studio set-up, I had to try it out. It uses two pieces of paper, two pieces of tape, one camera, one flash stand, and one flash. I have a SB-800 flash, so I could have done this without a cable, but I also used a hot shoe cable that allows me to thread the flash onto a ball head.

One piece of paper is used for the product’s background and the other arches over the product to diffuse the light. The flash is set off to one side of the studio, and shot into the paper. At the end, I used a Nikkor 105 macro lens f/16 1/250 second at 100 ISO and power at about 1/4 +1/3 + or – on the flash zoomed in to 105mm and about two feet away. I hand held my camera. This would work much better with the camera on a tripod and two flashes, but it’s not bad for quick and easy.

Here are two products that I shot. The first is one of my first attempts. Not bad diffusion. you can see that the right side of the image is a little grayer than the left. I think I was shooting f/11 here and the limited depth of field shows on this item.

Still a little gray on the right side, but much much better depth of field. I boosted contrast in Photoshop, although I could have just used a more contrasty curve in camera for the same effect. You know, I have no idea where I got that shot glass.

BTW, you can surf on over to the Ascension Lutheran Church’s website and see one of my images used to illustrate a sermon. The ALC is based out of Austin, TX. If I were to live in TX, Austin is where I’d be. It’s about time that I put the BA in Religion to work!