I'm curious to find out if anyone has had experience photographing shirts at home to post on their site.
I'd like to find out what it will take to allow me to produce professional-looking photos at home. Camera type? Lighting type? Background type? Generally what works best... maybe this is more difficult than it is worth and I should just take products to a professional studio but, I don't like waiting until I have many new products to meet professional studio minimums for pictures.
I do all mine at home; even sell some shots on stock photography sites.
I have a digital 4 Megapixel Canon Powershot. Even a 3 mega pixel camera would work fine if the shots are intended for the web. Main thing you want to do is make sure you adjust the image quality settings and the compressions settings on the camera. Most people just set their digital cameras to the lowest setting so they can fit more pics on their card, and never use the full potential of higher megapixel cameras anyway. You don't need anything fancy.
Have a camera? Good. Now go to Home Depot. Get two halogen work lamps; 500 or 1000 watt ($15-30 bucks a pop). Get them with a stand, or without if you want to do table top shots.
Get some white poster board, or some wax paper to use as a diffuser (placed inbetween the product and the lamp to soften the shadows) on one or both lights, depending on what you're trying to achieve. Usually you set one up as a key light and one as a fill.
Get a cheap, telescoping tripod from Target.
More posterboard, or a sheet for a backdrop.
You're good to go!
If you're having some problems getting true color with the snap and shoot digital cameras, try adjusting the "white balance" setting, it will help immensely.
i also found this tutorial on-line that gave some really good pointers for taking good pictures with an inexpensive camera. as long as you are just putting your pictures on a web page, you don't need an expensive camera.
Unless your cameras has some sort of "anti-shake" technology, you will definitely need a decent, good quality tripod. Using a cheap tripod isn't going to improve the picture quality enough to make it worth the few $'s you save.
I bought two cheapy torso mannequins (one male and one female) and waited for the first overcast day. When the skies diffused the light enough I placed the mannequins in front on a solid colored wall, threw shirts on the mannequins, pinched the fabric tight in the back with clothes pins, folded the sleeves somewhat nicely and snapped some pictures. My digital camera is about three years old, but it has both flash and detail settings. I took four pictures – flash off/detail off, flash off/detail on, flash on/detail off, flash on/detail on. I uploaded the pictures to my PC, decided which was best, and Photoshopped out the background and mannequin. Voila!
Roy, do you mind if I ask why you pinned the shirt in the back? I imagine it would be difficult for your customers to see the cut of the shirt if it is not hanging naturally.
Roy, do you mind if I ask why you pinned the shirt in the back? I imagine it would be difficult for your customers to see the cut of the shirt if it is not hanging naturally.
My intention wasn't to show the cut of the shirt, but rather to show off the colors on the ringers and raglan jerseys. I honestly never thought about showing the cut of the shirts. I might have to rephotograph everything on the next hazy day. My reason for pinning the clothes in back was to pull away as many wrinkles as I could and for greater control of the shirt.
My reason for pinning the clothes in back was to pull away as many wrinkles as I could and for greater control of the shirt.
Ah. I guess you are having problems with the wrinkles and draping throwing shadows over the designs.
Next time iron (or press) the shirt to minimize the wrinkles, and add more lighting. Shadows happen when light is only coming from one direction. The halogen work lamps that Nate mentioned would work just fine. Also, if you use more lighting you won't have to wait for the next hazy day.
You can also lay the shirts flat and photograph them from directly above (with a tripod), and then just erase the background.
Here's an excellent tutorial on photographing dark colored clothing, I thought it would be a useful addition to this thread:
do you think photos of the product (t-shirts) on the website should include a full picture of the model displaying the shirt or should the picture be taken neck down,
Photographing Products 
