Hi.. I am intrested in creating a complete photo catolog of all the products we sell, i belive a digital camera is a must, but i dont know which one, i also dont have any experince in photography to get about doing this task. how can i set up a small produt studio and make catalogs. what kind of software should i use. Can you please help me, by recomending the right camera or give a list of features i should look for in buying one.

thank you

-- Raja (eswaranv@hotmail.com), February 19, 2000

Answers

Unless your time is of little value to you, get a professional in to do the job for you. It'll be cheaper in the end, and you'll have a catalogue that will sell your goods, not just display them.

The cost of DIY setup is something like this:

Camera:- $800+ Tripod:- $100 Software:- $500+ (You'll need a decent image-editor and DTP suite if you want to take it to pre-press standards) CD writer:- $200+ Lighting equipment:- $300+ Floorspace for makeshift studio:- 60sq ft minimum Time in learning to take a product shot to pro standards:- 1,000 hours or more.

If you have a genuine interest in photography, go ahead and do it yourself. But if you're trying to do things on the cheap, it's false economy IMHO.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), February 21, 2000.

I agree, if you already own a busy business then learning all the "ins and outs" of this will probably result in a fiasco. You'll wind up spending tons of hours and in the end won't save much money if any. I think you should buy a good camera and learn it, buy an image editor and learn it,and maybe down the road it would be more cost effective to do it yourself. Starting from ground zero and getting great results is just not that easy. I'm sure you can pull it off on your own someday but it will just take time to learn the whole process. Just my opinion.

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), February 21, 2000.

The comments about there being more to taking great product shots than just getting a camera are pretty correct. OTOH though, if your shots are all very similar, you could hire a pro for a day (probably ~$500 for his day rate), and have him give you one or two fairly standard setups for the shots. Some pros might refuse, on the grounds of working themselves out of a job, but others would do it. (In most large cities, there are budding pro photographers who hire themselves out as assistants or "lighting technicians". These folks are both cheaper (~$200-250/day here in Atlanta), and perhaps less concerned about protecting their stock in trade. I had a great guy (Brian Crumb) help me out with some of the product shots we do for the web site here, and it made a big difference in the results. Still, there's a huge gap between what I'm doing for the product shots on the site, and the accepted quality level for product shots in a catalog. A lot will depend on what level of quality you require.

As to the camera, the thing I'd look for most is really good exposure control (meaning both aperture and shutter adjustment in 1/3 f-stop increments), and an external flash sync. I've shot a lot with the Oly C-2000, just upgraded to the C-2020. The C-2000 had a bad tendency (that we missed in our review) to shift the color balance a lot when we adjusted the exposure compensation upward by more than about 0.7EV (0.7 f-stops). I haven't yet used the C-2020 much, but it seems to do a little better in this respect. I shoot under hot lights, but the C-2020 would be a good choice for strobes, because it lets you adjust aperture in 1/3 stop increments. Its major competitor the Nikon Coolpix 950 only had three aperture settings, which made it more problematic with studio strobes. The new Nikon Coolpix 990 has a true iris aperture though, so will eliminate this shortcoming. (The new Oly C-3000 retains the full aperture control as well.)

Hope this helps, good luck!

-- Dave Etchells (hotnews@imaging-resource.com), February 23, 2000.