Bottle Photography: Photograph Bottle Products For eCommerce
Updated on February 15, 2023 in Photography by Nishant Shrimali
Getting started with bottle photography? You are going to enjoy and learn a lot from it, believe me. It can be for a client or experimenting for yourself. This process will help you understand and learn about lighting, reflectors, camera settings, equipment, setup, and more.
And to help you begin this journey resourcefully, I am sharing everything that you should about bottle photography.
In this article, you are going to learn about:
If you are capturing products like water bottles, wine or beer bottles, perfume bottles, a bottle of sauce, milk bottles, etc you have to read this article first.
Without taking any more time, let us begin with this guide to photographing bottle products for eCommerce.
Bottle Photography Equipments
The list of bottle photography equipment is fairly simple and regular for a product photographer. Here is everything that you’ll need:
- Table
- Tripod
- Black cards
- DSLR Camera
- Strobe lighting
- Softbox lighting
- Polarizing Gel
- Background cloth/paper
- White paper sheet (reflectors)
This is a list of basic bottle photography equipment for eCommerce product photography. With this equipment, you’ll be able to photograph bottles on a plain background, that is well lit from all sides and details visible.
You can even add some props once you start to understand the process, but if you are a beginner, it is better to learn basic product photography setup first.
Bottle Photography Setup
Setting up your studio might be overwhelming at the start, but as we go along you’ll learn why we are using and setting up the photography equipment the way we are.
Before that, we have to have a common understanding of the product. That is when we are capturing bottles, most of the time they will have a reflective surface. The goal of product photography is to capture a clean and clear photograph with all details and sides of the bottle visible.
To get that, let us set up our bottle photography equipment.
1. With the help of background cloth or paper, create a seamless background and base for your product.
2. Place the softbox light behind the background cloth to get the light from the background.
3. On the right-hand side place the white paper sheet that we will use as a reflector from the other side
4. On the front left side will main light which is our strobe light with the polarizing gel.
5. Now the DSLR camera will be placed right in front of the bottle fixed on the tripod.
We will place the black cards near the bottle at a 45 degree to have a clear outline of the bottle with shadow and lighting.
Bottle Photography Lighting
We have already discussed the lighting setup above. And here we are just discussing the role of various lights that you’ll be using.
Softbox
It is at the back of your background cloth/paper that will be putting light through the bottle and help you get clear boundaries without reflections. The closer the light is to the backdrop, the harder the light will be.
So it is recommended to keep the light slightly away from the backdrop so that there is a good spread of light. And when the light will pass through the cloth with the bottle in front, you’ll be able to capture it perfectly.
Strobe Light
The strobe is on the front left side of the table where the bottle is placed. From the top, it illuminates the front side of the bottle.
But if you capture it right away, you will see its reflection on the bottle. For that, we use a polarizing gel sheet on the light.
This will help you get light but help you avoid the reflection that is caused due to direct lighting on the bottle.
Reflectors
On the right side, we are using a white sheet as a reflector to fill in the length from another side of the product. This is done to make sure that during the bottle photography the details are clearly and easily visible.
How to photograph a bottle?
Now that all the setup is ready for bottle photography, all we have to do is photograph the bottled product.
1. Place the bottle in front of the camera on the table. Make sure that the camera is well aligned and that there is some negative space around the bottle in the frame.
2. Now, use the black cards and place them on either side of the bottle. This will create a slight shadow on the side of the bottle, giving it much more definition.
3. Turn on the softbox and get a trial shot. Here make sure that your softbox isn’t creating hard light on the bottle. If so, move the softbox slightly away from the background.
4. Now turn on your strode light and connect it with your camera. Adjust it and take a trial shot. If you see the hard reflection on the bottle, you shall use polarizing gel on the light and try again.
5. Take a close shot of the bottle in a way that the whole bottle is visible along with some negative space so that it is easy to create a cutout and change the background during post-production.
Bottle Photo Editing
Now that you are done with bottle photography it is time to get your images edited. Because of your professional bottle photography 50% of the work is done and now comes the other 50%.
At this stage, create a clean and precise cut out of the product using professional tools like a clipping path or even a magic wand.
It’s time to adjust the setting of the image like the exposure, saturation, highlights, shadows, etc. Also, ensure that there are no unwanted scratches, water droplets, fingerprints, etc on the bottle.
Now that the image is ready, we can either use it without a background in .png formate or put it on a background of the choice. Mostly eCommerce bottle photography uses a solid color background to display the bottle.
Bonus Read
After getting done with the bottle photography and capturing all the other eCommerce photography, editing them can be time-consuming. Especially when you are dealing with hundreds of products a day.
But rather than diverting your resourceful time into editing the image, you can outsource them. This will help you save time, but when you outsource your eCommerce images, you also get assistance from photo editing experts.
PixelPhant is a leading eCommerce photo editing service with a team of highly trained experts who will make sure your images look professional, descriptive, eye-pleasing, and perfect for your eCommerce. Got a product image? Get a free image editing trial now 👇.
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