Taking Photos At Home On A Small Budget

With the relatively affordable prices of digital cameras today, even including the entry-level DSLRs such as the Nikon D40x that I own, there are more and more people being introduced to photography and doing their best to learn the ins-and-outs of their camera.

Fortunately for all of us here at The Man Page, we have been treated to a steady diet of photography tips and tricks courtesy of our very own photographer and contributing writer, Eric Doggett.

Unfortunately, Eric is traveling this week and will not be sharing another one of his many lessons with all of us that are aspiring to be better photographers. In his absence, I thought that I would do my best to still provide you with a photography tip - although I certainly do not make any claims that I know what I am talking about.

Have you ever had to take an indoor picture of a small item?

• Maybe you have decided to try your hand at running an eBay business and you need to take pictures of small items that you are selling.

• Maybe you sell hand-crafted jewelry online and you need to regularly take pictures of your work.

• Maybe you are a blogger that is running a really cool contest giveaway and you need to take pictures of the prizes.

Regardless of the reasons behind why you need to take the picture, you will likely run into the same problems that I have faced, including poor lighting indoors (you cannot always count on sunlight) and a cluttered background of objects that detracts from the focal point.

So what do you do?

Depending on how much you have to budget, you can do something quick and dirty that will still provide good results or you can set up a portable studio area that is great for product photos.

On the lower end of the scale, you can visit a local fabric or craft store and pick up a few pieces of fabric in a variety of solid colors that will make a nice backdrop. Using a backdrop will eliminate the clutter that is often visible in the background of photos. You will need something to hold the fabric, although you might be just fine draping it over a chair or table.

This still leaves you with the question of what to do about lighting.

While it is nice to use sunlight to provide your lighting, that is not always an option. In most cases, you will not need any professional grade lighting equipment but it does help to pick up a couple of small lights that you can use to light your space.

With the problem of poor lighting and a cluttered background solved, one additional piece of equipment that will help provide crisp pictures is a tripod.

Since most of your pictures will likely be of tabletop items, you should be able to get by with a small tabletop tripod.

If you have visited any of your local photography stores, you will likely know that there is a wide range in prices for tripods - although they all seem to do just about the same thing.

So unless you consider yourself a professional photographer, you should be just fine with one of the more inexpensive models that are available.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could buy all of this as a package?

Funny you should ask that question, as you can most certainly buy the above items in a handy little package, sort of a “studio in a box”.

As a matter of fact, I just happened to buy one of these packages over the weekend and used it to take the picture of my contest prizes.

Here is a quick snapshot of what it looks like:

While my wife wasn’t too happy to see that her dining room had been converted into a makeshift photo studio, I found that this setup worked quite well for smaller items. It will require some practice and experimentation to get the lighting just right and obviously it will not work if you have large items to photograph, but it provides a nice area to photograph smaller items.

As much as I enjoy having this “studio in a box” to help produce higher quality indoor photos, I still prefer to get outside and capture my experiences with photos.

While we wait for Eric to return and share the tips of a professional, I’d be interested to hear what tips and tricks you have found to be helpful with taking photos at home.