How To Take Great Product Photos

Whether you've got a shop, or whether you just want to take photos of something you're selling on ebay, this guide on how to take great product photos (by Ray Dobbins) should help you. They explain how to get the best results using ordinary (aka cheap) building lighting. You can also read our guide on how to take great product photos where we show how we take photos of cameras (useful for small items as well!). (via BoingBoing.net)

"I use a tripod for 99% of my shots. I only take hand-held shots when I can't place the camera where I need to with the tripod (usually only in certain close-ups). But it is extremely difficult to take a good hand-held close-up shot. That's where the extra optical zoom capability of the Kodak camera really comes in handy - you don't have to get the camera in as close when you have a good zoom lens, so you can keep the camera on the tripod."

Backup Your Digital Camera Photos

A recent study showed that people were more concerned about losing digital photos than they were about losing their digital camera. This brings home the importance of making sure you have backups of your photos - if a hard drive dies in your computer and takes your photos with it - then it would be awful if you didn't have a backup. Perhaps one of the easiest, and possibly cheapest ways, of backing up all your photos (and other data) is to buy an external USB hard drive, such as the Seagate 1TB USB Drive (£62), Western Digital 1TB USB Drive (£63), or Lacie 1TB by Neil Poulton (pictured above, £71), and setup an automatic daily backup.

Free backup software that can backup your data may have already come with your PC such as Windows Backup, or alternatively you can use one of these free programs: ToDo-Backup, or EzBackItUp. You may even be able to get free backup software included with the USB Hard Drive, for example, the Verbatim 1TB USB Drive (£69) includes Nero Back It UP Essentials. It's also important to make sure you copy photos from your camera to your computer as quickly as possible, and regularly so that if the camera is lost, then you hopefully wont have lost any photos.

There are additional ways you can store or backup copies of your photos, for example, you could upload them all to one of many free photo hosting sites, for online backup. Or alternatively you could look at backup to CD/DVD, perhaps using Lightscribe (picture above) to label the discs, or even more technical storage involving RAID drives. For more information on the numerous options available, have a look at PetaPixel's Guide to Long Term Backup.

More information on Backing up your Photos: DPReview Guide