Home made product photography table - a little project.

bass_junkie83

bass_junkie83

Messages
4,367
Name
Dave
Edit My Images
Yes
It seems my handyness (as well as ability to invent new words) is considerably better than my photography, so i thought i would take advantage of this to build something that i can use to help improve my photographic skills.

So, i am going to build my own product photography table.
I already have it pretty much sorted in my head how i am going to do it. It will be for small items and based on using A1 card as the background. My local art shop keeps a huge range and decent quality A1 card sheets in a vast variety of colours and shades, so i can change the backgrounds over depending on what i want.

But before i go do far into drawing up my first design, there is something i'm not sure on.

Would i be best to keep the depth of the base and height of the back wall the same, so having the bend radius of the card in the middle of the sheet. Or would it be an advantage to bias towards a back wall height that is higher than the depth of the base or vice versa?

I.e.
backdrop.JPG
 
I guess that's pretty obvious when you think about it.
Ok, i have an idea of how to design it with a degree of adjustment.
 
Right, this is my plan.

table.JPG


It is going to be a 12mm mdf frame construction, that can fold flat for storage, perspex base for under-lighting and adjustable background position.

Backgrounds will be interchangeable A1 card sheets, so any colour can be used. And the clamp strips can be moved back and forward in 100mm increments to suit the required position of the background.
It wont have any legs, it will just sit on top of my glass dining table.

Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to knock it up once i have the materials. Quite looking forward to getting my hands dirty. :)
 
The one I made out of a big cardboard box (now that's low-budget) is 75" wide, 60" deep and 30" high which worked fine. If you make it higher than that at the back and are lighting it from the back then the light is going to hit your object at a much higher angle. About 45 degrees works, so if the height is the same as the depth and the object is in the middle of the table then the angle will be much steeper than that. Object size and the angle that you shoot at will come into play too obviously.

Adjustable background clip height looks good. I don't think you'll ever use it at a 1:1 depth:height setting though, plus that wouldn't give you much depth using an A1 sheet would it?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top