Best Mirrorless Camera For Product Photography – As a professional photographer or e-commerce entrepreneur, you’ll be faced with a series of questions about the Holy Grail of the product photography business: equipment. There’s no escaping the quality-price carousel, but with a basic understanding of what makes photographic processes work, you’ll be able to choose the best camera for YOUR product photography.
We’re here to help with a starter guide that lists everything you need to know before spending any of your product photography camera budget.
Best Mirrorless Camera For Product Photography
This seems to be the first question to ask yourself, as the camera never plays a role by itself. Even the best camera and hundreds of professional photographers will not achieve satisfactory results without the support of a good lens, a well-equipped studio and ultimate retouching capabilities.
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Cameras also require accessories such as tripods, flashes or memory cards. The selection of all this equipment must be coordinated and planned in advance.
If you’re worried about choosing a lens, head over to our dedicated article that sheds light on the issue and offers accurate model recommendations. The general rule of thumb will be to go for the higher end lenses as the basics have poor sharpness specs.
In the event that you plan to build a photo studio as well (this will be the requirement for fully professional product photos), prepare for a busy session on equipment selection. Our guide on how to run a photography studio may be of help.
From the very first shot, image quality and shorter sessions will be your product photography goals. The first measure ensures good-looking photos for your website or portfolio, while the second saves time and money.
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Choosing equipment adapted for both purposes will guide you to factors such as the ergonomics of the camera, its color reproduction and resolution. Questions will arise about the shape of the camera body and the accessibility of its buttons. You might be tempted to delve further into the long-standing debate about the color fidelity of each camera model or brand. And the answer to the resolution question will not necessarily be “never enough”…
Next are the camera settings and their flexibility. Since product photography is more still, you’ll notice that the available shutter speed range is less important, as long as the apertures you’ll be using stay in the middle range.
If you intend to use lifeview, a very useful option in product photography automation options, the quality of the camera’s autofocus will play a role. Mirrorless cameras usually have more AF points and additional manual focus amplifiers, making focusing more precise. You’ll wonder if the extra AF speed added by mirrorless cameras will convince you to buy one over a DSLR.
Finally, you’ll look at different sensor sizes and useful studio options like tethering and remote control. In general, a camera by itself means little without the surrounding equipment with which it must communicate.
Best Cameras For Product Photography In 2023
The camera you choose for indoor product photography will be part of the equipment that serves you 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. This is a significant period of time that places serious demands on camera ergonomics.
If you plan to shoot handheld, the ergonomic shape of the camera body will come first. A camera that fits well in the hand and has a comfortable weight will be a bonus for anyone who plans to shoot on all-day sessions.
Next is the placement of buttons and dials on the case so that all the main functions are easily accessible. Think first about the camera settings triangle and look for the easy setting of shutter speed, aperture and ISO speed. An additional hotkey should be programmable to your liking. From our experience, you can do it to switch for:
Whenever the object category and session purpose change, you’ll be able to reprogram the button (or more!) and get the easy access you need.
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There is a difference in ergonomics between mirrorless cameras and DSLRs. The former are significantly reduced in size due to simpler construction. You can take both as an advantage (in the case of carrying) or as a disadvantage when it comes to a firm grip on the body and lens. Remember, you can always apply additional grips to smaller cameras to adjust them to your liking.
The design of modern mirrorless cameras allows comfortable work with both the electronic viewfinder and the LCD screen. The practical advantage of mirrorless cameras is the ability to see the photo with final lighting applied in lifeview. Very often LCD screens are of better quality in mirrorless solutions.
Compared to DSLR cameras, where the viewfinder is optical, the electronic screen affects battery life both in the long term and in terms of the number of shots per charge cycle. Workarounds such as automatically turning off the viewfinder have been implemented, but the effect remains visible.
Battery life becomes secondary when you decide to implement an AC adapter that replaces the battery and provides power directly from the mains. If you work continuously for long periods of time, you will appreciate the reduction in charging operations that the adapter provides.
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Your choice of product photography equipment can be influenced by color rendering parameters. Cameras work based on filters to mimic the perception of color by the human eye. Since this varies from person to person, the issue of color rendering has a subjective element.
Tests (Tony Northrup, YouTube) clearly showed that brand loyalty and test complexity influence consumer judgments of color reproduction quality. What remains more important than the highly inflated question of color science is the correct application of white balance.
Make sure your best product photography camera has flexibility in white balance settings and is easily accessible to change when your lighting changes.
Deciding whether you need high resolution in your camera will mainly depend on the purpose of the photos you are creating.
Different Types Of Cameras Used For Photography
LED billboards, catalogs and any printed materials will require a large number of megapixels to ensure good print quality and scalability. If you plan to create a lot of lookbook and still life photos, then you might want to consider a camera with the best resolution available.
Remember that the larger the surface on which you intend to present your photos, the higher resolution you require from the photo material.
On the other hand, when your focus is more on package photos, e-commerce and website photos, you may be happy with the standard resolutions available in the market. Amazon and similar platforms have their own resolution requirements, and we’ve written about this in the Amazon Photography Guide.
In either case, the sharpness and flawlessness of the photo output will depend on the quality of the lens system and perhaps the camera’s lens correction system. You can think of this dependency as similar to what an artist faces when painting on a canvas: the canvas (resolution) may be larger, but the quality of the paint and brush will determine the precision of the painting.
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Product photography will guide you to a fairly limited range of camera settings that you prefer to use. In the settings triangle, you’ll aim for low ISO speed (you won’t have problems in low light in a studio) and medium apertures (for best sharpness), while shutter speed won’t be as important on a tripod camera.
Different camera bodies will offer different ranges of shutter speeds. You can leave this setting for event photographers and pay more attention to ISO ranges. This is just because a camera body with a better ISO range will also have a better noise reduction system and a more powerful processor.
Although you’ll mainly be using full manual mode when shooting packages, some cameras offer intelligent support in automatic mode. You might think that landscape mode is useful for the greatest depth of field, and the Sony DRO solution for the highest possible dynamic range.
Tethering, an option for studio use, means remote control of the camera via a computer. You connect the two devices via a cable, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection. Additional software is required to operate the camera and enable features such as shooting (saving images directly to the computer) and on-the-fly editing.
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Tethering is a solution common among professional photographers as it offers technical and time advantages. With the ability to display freshly taken photos on large screens, the photographer can better direct the session, avoid technical errors and view camera settings more accurately.
As for on-the-fly capture and release, they save time migrating photos between the camera and the post-processing station. The effectiveness of this depends on connection stability (cable recommended) and software compatibility.
Before buying a product photography camera, consult the compatibility lists of your post-processing software and check all the connectivity options that come with the camera. Adobe LightRoom and CaptureOne both have a wide range of compatible cameras, while Canon offers a standalone app for remote camera control.
In general, the better you tune your camera and tethering software to what is needed, the more time and procedurally efficient sessions you will have.
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In product photography, the Full Frame image sensor is not the “only” choice as it can be in other branches of photography. When looking for an optimal camera, you can give
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