PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS for Product Photography Using Your Smartphone

So what exactly were the problems in the ugly shot and how can we solve these to get the second and nicer shot?

First of all, the first image lacks SHARPNESS.

That’s an easy fix: Just put the phone on a tripod and use a cable release.

Regarding the iPhone you can use the plus-button on the earphone cable. On other phones, you can use the self timer as an alternative. For a good depth-of-field, you can stack some shots with different focus.

In the example above, I stacked two shots––one for the blade and one for the handle––and combined the two shots later-on in Photoshop (see the screenshots in the gallery below).

Then the EXPOSURE and the WHITE BALANCE are off. No big deal! Just switch to another app, that allows adjusting these settings.

I use 645 Pro Mk III for that purpose, select the ISO (to ISO 50) and adjust the exposure compensation until I get a decent result. The white balance can be set using a graycard and then the lock function of the WB button in the 645 Pro app.

Then I set up the scene: The slate tile stays, but I place the knife a bit higher using a piece of metal (which I clone out later in Photoshop). Around the knife I put some drops of Glycerine from the local pharmacy.

We are almost set, but the most important part is still missing––the LIGHT!

The first photo was shot with the internal LED flash of the iPhone, and the result was just plain ugly. So this takes some thoughts now. I illustrated the light sources needed in a little lighting diagram: