Garry Edwards
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This thread seems - as is sadly often the case - to have decended into acrimony and insults.
Let's forget the OP for now, because we still don't have a clear idea of what he is photographing, why or how, and we still don't know - and maybe never will - why he thinks that he has to use a smartphone. . .
Let's think instead about product photography and product lighting.
Now, the term "product photography" is at best a very broad church and at worst a near-meaningless term because it encompasses everything from awful snapshots on fleabay to £40K or so per day (including technical costs) for high end advertising shots that are designed to create a very strong "want" in the mind of the potential customers, and the actual products can include tiny knicknacks right through to extremely expensive vehicles, top end fashion and everything in between. So often though, product photography is seen as a simple task and a boring one. Neither is true.
Cutting through all the murk (or at least trying to) there are two distinct types of product photography.
Type one is the key image, the one that makes the potential customer want to buy it, hold it, touch it, own it. Almost regardless of subject this type of shot requires far more in the way of knowledge, skill and equipment than type 2, which are basically just simple illustrative shots which show what the product looks like from various angles, and which show closeups of fine detail etc. I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to take type 2 shots with poor lighting and a phone, but the option is there, assuming that only web-size images are needed.
For what I call type one, the absolute minimum in terms of a camera is a DSLR, preferably full-frame, to get reasonable image quality. The next step up from that is of course a medium format digital, quite a lot of the best product photographers still use a large format monorail camera but of course the skill and knowledge level needed for this excludes a lot of people, as does the costly slow working and the technical costs.
In terms of lighting, what most beginners simply don't get is that lighting is about creating the right shadows in the right places, they seem to think that it's all about having enough light for the exposure, and they simply surround the product with light, creating a horrible bland effect. In order to light well we need to have a working knowledge of physics and suitable equipment, plus a lot of practice.
There are some very talented, creative photographers who can turn their hand to just about anything and who can produce impressive results with really poor lighting, and I used to know a guy like that. He was in the army, a Staff Sergeant from memory and he had virtually nothing to do, so he filled his time producing pretty outstanding shots of people. I knew that he used very poor quality flashes and when we finally met up he told me that he found the whole thing very frustrating because the colour differences between one flash and the next and the output differences between one shot and the next meant that he had to take multiple shots every time in the hope that he would end up with a decent shot. He then moved to much better equipment, this didn't produce better results but it made life a whole lot easier for him and of course his production rate went through the roof.
Personally I don't see the point in having really high end equipment, at least not for the vast majority of people, and by that I mean that I don't see the need to spend thousands on each flash just because it has Bron written on it..
For people who are shooting fashion or any other fast moving type of subject, decent IGBT lights are well worth the money partly because of the fast recycling, partly because of the very short flash durations at low power but for static subjects any good make of flash will do. What matters is colour temperature consistency and flash energy consistency and if we ignore the fleabay specials, most mains powered flash units are now good enough.
Let's forget the OP for now, because we still don't have a clear idea of what he is photographing, why or how, and we still don't know - and maybe never will - why he thinks that he has to use a smartphone. . .
Let's think instead about product photography and product lighting.
Now, the term "product photography" is at best a very broad church and at worst a near-meaningless term because it encompasses everything from awful snapshots on fleabay to £40K or so per day (including technical costs) for high end advertising shots that are designed to create a very strong "want" in the mind of the potential customers, and the actual products can include tiny knicknacks right through to extremely expensive vehicles, top end fashion and everything in between. So often though, product photography is seen as a simple task and a boring one. Neither is true.
Cutting through all the murk (or at least trying to) there are two distinct types of product photography.
Type one is the key image, the one that makes the potential customer want to buy it, hold it, touch it, own it. Almost regardless of subject this type of shot requires far more in the way of knowledge, skill and equipment than type 2, which are basically just simple illustrative shots which show what the product looks like from various angles, and which show closeups of fine detail etc. I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to take type 2 shots with poor lighting and a phone, but the option is there, assuming that only web-size images are needed.
For what I call type one, the absolute minimum in terms of a camera is a DSLR, preferably full-frame, to get reasonable image quality. The next step up from that is of course a medium format digital, quite a lot of the best product photographers still use a large format monorail camera but of course the skill and knowledge level needed for this excludes a lot of people, as does the costly slow working and the technical costs.
In terms of lighting, what most beginners simply don't get is that lighting is about creating the right shadows in the right places, they seem to think that it's all about having enough light for the exposure, and they simply surround the product with light, creating a horrible bland effect. In order to light well we need to have a working knowledge of physics and suitable equipment, plus a lot of practice.
There are some very talented, creative photographers who can turn their hand to just about anything and who can produce impressive results with really poor lighting, and I used to know a guy like that. He was in the army, a Staff Sergeant from memory and he had virtually nothing to do, so he filled his time producing pretty outstanding shots of people. I knew that he used very poor quality flashes and when we finally met up he told me that he found the whole thing very frustrating because the colour differences between one flash and the next and the output differences between one shot and the next meant that he had to take multiple shots every time in the hope that he would end up with a decent shot. He then moved to much better equipment, this didn't produce better results but it made life a whole lot easier for him and of course his production rate went through the roof.
Personally I don't see the point in having really high end equipment, at least not for the vast majority of people, and by that I mean that I don't see the need to spend thousands on each flash just because it has Bron written on it..
For people who are shooting fashion or any other fast moving type of subject, decent IGBT lights are well worth the money partly because of the fast recycling, partly because of the very short flash durations at low power but for static subjects any good make of flash will do. What matters is colour temperature consistency and flash energy consistency and if we ignore the fleabay specials, most mains powered flash units are now good enough.
