LIGHTING – Making a Diffusion Panel

Rule one: the product needs to look great! Everybody’s selling stuff on eBay. People like you, people like me, and people who make their living buying and reselling in cyberspace. What used to be a way to sell of your old junk has now become big business. There is money to be made, but as with any business, you need to present your product well and make it enticing to the customer.

Sure, you could plop your stuff on the kitchen table and click a picture with the flash blaring and your dirty dishes off in the background, but will that help you get top dollar for your goods? Probably not. But with a few simple steps, anyone can shoot products like a pro.

To make this shot of my Bolex 16mm motion picture camera, I needed 3 things:

• Sunlight
• A Homemade Diffusion Panel
• A black backdrop
• (Well, four things if you count my digital camera.)

I took this shot with my Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera. Nothing fancy here, just a plain old digital camera set to AUTO.

The key to making this shot look great is the LIGHTING. Lighting is everything in a product shot. But you don’t need fancy equipment when the sun is ready, available, and free. Diffusing the light with a homemade diffusion panel makes the light flattering, even and glowing.

Here’s how to make a diffusion panel:

1) Go to the art supply store and buy wooden stretchers for painting canvas. These come in a variety of sizes and you simply fit them together to make a frame. Totally easy.

2) Next, buy some diffusion material. I used a diffusion gel made for photographers and cinematographers called 216. It’s basically thick plastic sheeting on rolls. But many other materials are great diffusers such as Vellum (available at art supply stores), white parachute cloth, silk or muslin from the fabric store, or even frosted Plexiglas from the hardware store. Your goal is to find material that is light, white, and hard to see through. Make sure to use a material that doesn’t have a pattern to it.

3) Attach the diffusion material to the frame with a staple gun and cover the edges with duct tape or cloth tape.

That’s it! Next you will need to set up your diffusion panel outside.

A note about the size of your diffusion panel: The diffusion panel I made is about 2’x3’ (60cm x 90cm). Bigger than 4-feet (120cm) gets a little unruly, but it is the size of the products you are shooting that will make the difference. If you are shooting something very large, you will need another lighting technique, but for most objects, you will need a diffusion panel about 4-times the size of your product.

Stay tuned for Part 2, Setting Up Your Shot