If you have a website that sells products that you stock, you are obviously going to need a digital camera. Prices have come down drastically over the years and a digital camera is one of the smartest purchases that you can make, as you only develop your best photos, saving greatly on cost. You can also easily share photos and videos (most digital cameras these days take 2 minute videos) with family by uploading them to DropShots. You can get a free account and in 5 minutes, have your videos and photos on your own little web site.
Canon Powershot is a favourite for digital photos. They are easy to use and have a feel and sound similar to film cameras. A friend bought a G2 on eBay used for $250 USD, three years ago and she takes pretty good photos with it. It didn't even come with a manual!
Great photos are a necessity in e-commerce. It doesn't matter how gorgeous your web site is, or how wonderful, unique and well-made or designed your product is, if your photos are dark, faraway, blurry or worse-- all of these things-- your only customers will be friends and family who feel sorry for you, if you're lucky.
The good news is that it is easy to take good photos. First, I'll give you the basics on using your camera, then we will discuss design.
1. If you are like most people, you probably use your camera on auto. The only way that you will get great photos on auto is if there is already a lot of natural light. You can take photos outside with your camera on auto and they can be very nice, if you do it at the right time of day.
So, when is the best time of day?
A) early morning;
B) 12 noon;
C) afternoon-early evening;
D) whenever your kids are zonked out on TV.
The answer is actually A and C. Noon lighting is too harsh for photography, lending a white-out effect to your subject and creating deep, dark shadows. Early morning and late afternoon lighting is softer and allows the colours and dimension of your subject shine through.
2. If you are photographing still objects indoors, you do not want to use your auto setting because the flash will produce a similar effect as noon-day sun, only more so. So, find your manual setting (M). Once you put it on, your photo might look really dark. That's okay because it's adjustable. Now, every camera is different, of course, so I can't tell you exactly how to do this but if your camera is like mine, you will have a button that allows you to go up and down in your camera's menu. If you push this button, it should start to change the F-stop at the bottom of your display. Do you see a number that begins with an F in front of it? That is the F-stop. It relates to the size of your camera lens. The smaller the number (like F2), the larger the diameter of the open lens. The larger the open lens, the more light it is bringing into the camera. This also means, unfortunately, that it takes longer for the lens to shut. The longer it takes to shut, the more opportunity the camera has to capture movement. Everything that appears in your camera's view while that lens is still open, gets put into the photo. So, if you are lucky and Brad Pitt dashes past your camera as you are trying to take your photo, he will also be in your photo, blurry though.
If you move even the tiniest bit while taking photos indoors on the manual setting, unless you have windows everywhere and enough light to kill a vampire, your photo will be blurry and crummy. So, either get a tripod, or rest your camera on a table and then press the button to take the photo. You can build up your platform with a stack of steady books, if you have to, in order to raise your camera to the level of your subject. When you press the button to take the photo, you CAN'T MOVE it at all.
Now, if you do this and your photo still needs tweaking, you can download Picasa for free (Thank you, Google!). Once downloaded, Picasa will automatically start importing photos from your computer, all on its own. The program is extremely easy to use. The main jobs that you will likely want to perform, are pretty self-explanatory: red eye reduction, cropping, lighting. If you still have problems or questions, pop on over to our forum and someone will help you out.
Design
What should you use to showcase your wares? Ideally, you should have a white background. White allows the colours in your wares to be perceived more accurately. A blue wall could distort the colour of your item or could cause your potential customer to wonder if the blue wall is distorting the colour, even if it isn't. White looks professional. Sometimes I've seen people photograph jewelry against a black background. This is a terrible idea, and do I really need to explain why? Everything shows up better against white.
What if your carpet is white? Does that make a good backdrop? NO! No carpet, no clutter, no blanket that looks like a blanket. You could use a sheet in an artful way. You could use your wall, if it's clean. You could use a large white bristol board.
If you are looking to remove the background from your photo, know that this is not really a newbie technique. You can do this with PhotoShop, of course, but the program is very difficult to use. Another program that is pretty good but still a little bit difficult to figure out without an instruction manual is GIMP. Here is a good article on how to remove photo backgrounds using GIMP.
Good luck!
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