360 degree product photography - any ideas?

Tafkap · 14 Mar 2013 at 09:35

Hello all,

A friend of mine owns a shop and is looking to add product photographs to his website that can be rotated.

I have seen a couple of options for software on the web but I'd rather have some practical suggestions or experience from someone who's actually done such a thing.

Thanks for all contributions!

Jase · 14 Mar 2013 at 09:47

Not sure what size of product you are talking about, however I've used a turntable with object2vr software which was pretty simple and not expensive.

http://gardengnomesoftware.com/object2vr.php

geuben · 14 Mar 2013 at 11:36

I built a turn table to automate this exact thing for my brother (who does this sort of photography for businesses).

Tafkap · 14 Mar 2013 at 13:21

Thanks. Can you buy turntables online that do this kind of thing, with degree markings on them so you can be precise?

It's musical instruments by the way, but nothing bigger than a saxophone I don't think.

Jase · 14 Mar 2013 at 15:50

Yeah I got mine from red-door.co.uk

I already had a Nodal Ninja so just need the turntable.

Ksanti · 14 Mar 2013 at 16:33

Why would you want to take 360 degree panoramas of a saxophone? Or is this just as part of the shop gallery rather than actually being product images?

Tafkap · 15 Mar 2013 at 09:39

No it's a product image he wants that you can rotate in 360 to get a good overall view of the instrument. Thanks for the suggestions guys!

Ksanti · 15 Mar 2013 at 09:45

Oh right I got confused as to what you meant by 360, my bad

Tafkap · 16 Mar 2013 at 22:27

Thanks for the response guys.

The next question that we just realised needs answering is, how do we go about hiding whatever is holding the musical instrument up?

For instance, a saxophone held up on a turntable with some kind of support.. When the turntable is rotated, that stand will come into view. Editing all that out later would take far too much work, I wonder how the professionals do it?

Evkar · 1 Apr 2013 at 02:31

You can try to suspend your object without the use of supporting stands.

So you would have a fishing line or a wire that would keep your saxophone upright from above and then the saxophone would only touch your turntable slightly just enough to have it rotate with your turntable. We have done something like this with our scuba fins using a manual turntable like this one and some wiring above it - http://www.photogear360.com/content/8-diy-360-product-photography-turntable

You may still need to remove the fishing line on your final images although it's usually invisible once your resize them.