How To Setup A Product Shot With 1 Light - FAST & EASY For Beginners

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How To Setup A Product Shot With 1 Light - FAST & EASY For Beginners - In this video, will teaches you how to setup a fast product shot that looks good using 1 video light and then several techniques to shape the light to get a desired result. He also introduces a second RGB light to stylize the shot.

In this video, I'm going to teach you how to do a very simple product shot setup. We're using just a desktop, some items on the desk, and a very small item which is going to be an SD card. We have the camera set up. I'll walk you through the settings, and I think you'll be surprised at how good this looks, even though we're using one light source. Let's jump in.

All right, so the setup I have here is, we have a desktop which is basically just a wooden top that has been sanded and stained with this dark color. A texture like that works really well for product shots because it's not solid white or solid black, and it's also not too reflective. For the products on the desk, it's fairly straightforward. Now, we are using these SD cards, so I have an SD card holder as well as a MacBook Pro laptop. So, those are the things we're going to be putting on the desk and we're going to orientate them in a way that looks good for the camera that we have set up over here.

For lighting, we actually have just one light source, and that is an Amaran 200x set to daylight at around 20 brightness. It's being diffused with a fairly large softbox, so it's coming on a side angle at about six feet off the ground. It's bouncing a large portion of the light off the wall, which is, in this case, a white wall. Now, that makes a huge difference. I'll show you in a bit why that is. So, it's bouncing off the white wall onto our product area.

For the camera settings, we're shooting at F 3.5 at 4K 24 with an ISO of 1250 and with a shutter speed of 1/50th. Now, for the lens, we're using a 17 to 28 zoom lens from Tamron. It's an F 2.8 lens, and right now, I have it zoomed in all the way to 28 for this product shot.

So, because we have our light set up, it's again around 20 brightness and it's very diffused because of the softbox that is angled toward the white wall. I want to say that if we put up just like a white card like this, it doesn't really make any difference. However, if we were to use something a lot darker like this black blanket, and shout out to Storyblocks for setting that, this is not sponsored but thank you Storyblocks. If we use a black blanket, it cuts out quite a lot of lighting from the shot and it's very significant how much that changes the look of the shot.

So, keep that in mind when you're setting up your own product shot. Even though we're getting away with one light source, the bounced light off the white background is probably actually the biggest part of this entire setup. Now, that is subjective and, depending on how bright your side light is, and how large the bounce is, and how close it is to your product setup, that will influence the overall light as well as the exposure settings you have on your camera.

So, there's a lot of variables. But in this specific setup, there is a large white wall, and our light source is fairly far away, so we really have two light sources even though there's one light. Now that we've talked about the rough lighting setup and the camera settings, let's talk about the positioning of the items we're gonna have on the desk.

So, first, I'm going to open up the SD card reader, sort of position that somewhere in the shot, and then we'll take the laptop. And because this is a secondary item, meaning it's not going to be featured, it can be out of focus and even overexposed a little bit in the background. We also don't need to show the majority of the laptop, and I think that's a big misconception that people have when they're first doing product shots. They think they need to include all objects and every item needs to be in focus or exposed properly. That is not the case at all. In fact, in most professional setups, you have the product itself nicely exposed and in focus, and then you have an assortment of random items laid on the desk. Some items don't even make sense. They're just added there for a bit of color or, you know, to fill up a dark area in the shot.

So, in this case, I'm going to put down the laptop and just try to find a good sweet spot for it where it breaks up the image a little bit but enough that people can get an idea of what it likely is. Which, in this case, you can see the side here and based on the items on the desk, being an SD card, people can assume that this is a laptop. So, I think I'll move it in a little more, and I think the sweet spot for these will probably be something like that, give or take. And then we'll make sure that we are focused right on the cards themselves.

Just wanted to break the video up here for a quick second to let you know that we have a ton of resources on our alienwill.com website, like our color grading LUT pack or our Premiere Pro Motion Graphics mogrt pack that we use to speed up the editing process in most of our videos. We also have a business success ebook that I recently wrote for creatives and entrepreneurs that includes how we structure our business, make money, earn passive income, the apps, software, and subscriptions we use, as well as a ton of other resources and sales strategies for growing your business and landing clients. So, if you're interested in any of these, they're on sale now at the alienwill.com website or through the link in the description.

The next thing I notice is there's not much shape to the light. It's just a lot of light coming in, bouncing, and then entering the scene. So, we can shape this a little bit. I have a c-stand here and I have just a white bounce card. So, even though it's white, if it goes in front of the light, it can be used to block the light, known as a flag. So, on this c-stand, I'm just gonna put it in the end of the c-stand head or the arm, lock it off there, and then sort of position it in place so that it blocks a little bit of light. Right away, it makes a pretty big difference. I'll cut between the two so you can see an idea of what the before and after looks like. And I think I'll also move the laptop a little closer.

Alright, so I would say within just a few minutes, we have a very usable, uh, product shot setup. Now, in post-production, you could zoom in a bit to finalize the shot or add maybe a slow zoom. And as it stands now, this could be your final shot. I think this does look good. However, if you wanted to take it to that next level, you could get one of these little, uh, Aperture MC Lights. They're really amazing lights. They're very bright, but they have the option, if you hold in the little scroll wheel, you can change it to the color mode. And then for this one, maybe we'll do, let's see what looks good here, maybe we'll cycle toward the blue and just our frame here as if it's like a window.

Because I've placed it right on the edge of the desk, it's causing some shadows coming off of the SD card holder, and this is creating a pretty cool texture on the wood. And again, that just adds to the shaping of the overall light. Now, I'd say this is a little bright, so I'm gonna take it down just a little bit. So it was at 90, now it's at 50. We'll see if that improves it. I'll go down just a little more, we'll go to 20 percent, and I think that's looking a little better. It's also adding a little bit of blue to the edge of the laptop, which is nice.

Now, again, there's a whole bunch of different things you could do. You could bring it on, you know, this side here, or even you could motivate some blue light from off the camera on this side. So this is another option with a third light source. However, I'm not really a fan of having light come from all the different angles. I much prefer just the two and then, you know, shape the light a little further if you need to. So I think we'll settle with the other plan of having the blue light towards the back left of the shot.

And I would say that's the end. Okay, I hope this video was helpful. At the very least, it should have taught you that you don't need a whole bunch of different light sources. You could even replace the actual light with just a bright window. In other words, setting up your whole setup beside a window on an overcast day and maybe hang like a white, sort of see-through curtain in front, and then that way you diffuse the sunlight, and that could be light source. Then use a bounce card on the opposite side, as I'm doing with this white wall, and then you suddenly have two light sources, and that's more than enough to create an amazing-looking shot in just a few minutes.

So that's a shot. I hope it was helpful. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to see more videos from us in the future. We have over 200 videography-related videos on the channel, so lots of stuff for you to learn from. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you next time.

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