How to Shoot white Object on White Background?

If you’re into professional product photography, you’ll come across one problem time after time shooting white products on white background. Even if you’ve done product photography with white background in the past, this is a problem that needs to be solved every time as the shades, shapes, and sizes of different products differ from each other. Photos of some objects might be perfect under some circumstances while some products might get overexposed. For example, the settings for makeup product photography will be different compared to shooting a white bag.

In this article, we’ll show you how you can get the perfect clicks of white objects against a white background. And you won’t need to go to a commercial product photography studio to shoot it. You can do this at your home studio.

Let’s go step by step.

1. First Things First

The first thing you need to do before you get on with the process is to alter the white balance of your camera according to the lighting condition of the shooting place as well as the object that you want to shoot.

Once that is done, you should set your camera to the highest shutter speed that fits in with your lighting. This value might vary from 1/160 to 1/200. If you want to be on the safer side, keep it 1/160. This will minimize the ambient light in the image. You should also set your ISO to the minimum for minimum noise.

The aperture of your camera also plays a crucial role as far as focusing on the product is concerned. The higher you keep the F-number, the more focus will be on the object. Mostly, you should keep it between F8 to F11.

Although you can take great shots by handholding your camera, you might also want to consider setting up the camera on a tripod to give stability and consistency to your shots.

2. Set Up the Background

To shoot a white object, the first thing you need is a large white surface in the background. This surface could be a reflector, a white foam board, or even a large piece of white paper. Place the white postcard paper in a bit open ‘L’ shape on a flat surface and against a wall. Make sure that the paper has a nice curve on it. This will ensure that the background doesn’t have any hard lines or corners.

3. Lighting

For lighting, you should use lighting with zero yellow tones to it. We suggest using a daylight-balanced bulb that is blue-toned in nature. This will not only eliminate the yellow tone, but it’ll also help you maintain the white balance in your image.

The challenge is to separate the white object from the white background. To do so, you’ll need to apply the lighting in such a way that it focuses more on the background than the product. This will give a strong white color to the background, which in turn will bring the product to a grey-ish shade. As a result, both the product and the background are distinguished clearly.

Here, you’ll need to experiment with your lights and reflectors to give optimum focus to the object. You might need to try different distances and angles to give the perfect lighting to your images.

4. Post Processing

Once you’ve clicked your pictures, it’s time to take them to a workshop (editing) to give the final touch. This will help you get rid of tiny imperfections and reflections from your product. To do so, you can use the “burn and dodge” tool in Photoshop. This will get those edges away from the background. Then, if needed, you could also light up the background a bit to produce more clarity in the image.