I'm trying to get some advice for shooting new product shots for my company website. A lot of the pictures are 8+ years old and too small for the screen resolutions common today. Plus they were shot with a Sony that took 3.5" floppy discs. When I took the original photos, I really had no idea what I was doing, not that I'm any kind of an expert now mind you, and had to do a lot of playing around in Photoshop, including removing the white paper background the items were on to make it absolutely white. My question is, would I be able to build a table with a white translucent top (I have a sheet of white opaque plastic that should work) and fire a strobe about 1 stop or so hotter than the one that will illuminate the product to get my blown out background? I'll add shadows in with CS4 if I want them. Or would having the item placed right on the surface cause problems? I guess I could figure out a way to elevate them a few inches. I just wanted to get some feedback before I take the time to build something. All shots of the products (I own a holster company) would be taken directly overhead.
The most versatile table set will be one with clear glass that you can fire lights from underneath to get some hard light, throw some diffusion gels over, or toss some white/black seamless over.
Back lighting is not necessarily a good way to ensure a clean white background so you can cut the object out of the b/g easily.
Better is to light the object and background separately so that you can control the product light for optimum reflections and you can make the b/g a clean white w/o shadows.
I often suspend my subjects in front of a gray b/g with mono filament line and just remove the line digitally later.
I'd suggest getting the book "Light -- Science & Magic" to learn how light works and how to adapt your lighting scheme to your product for best results.
