Pixiq

A tabletop studio is a complete, miniature photo studio, that just sits on a table rather than fill a room. It has two components, the background and the lighting. The tabletop studio is easy to set up in a few of minutes and in just a few square feet of space. From photographing the family jewels for insurance, to pictures of items for an auction site, to art and craftwork images jury submission or to just have fun photographing small things, you'll find a million uses for it.

The key to a tabletop studio is the background. Seamless backgrounds remove distractions from pictures and focus attention on the subject. They create professional looking horizon-less images. The simplest background is a large piece of white or colored paper hung above the tabletop. For example, take a 20 x 30 inch piece of paper and hang it by the 20 inch side from the wall about 15 inches above the table. Where the paper meets the tabletop, lay it out with a gentle curve and voila, you have a seamless background. If you want a more professional look you can get small backgrounds from any of a number of online suppliers, including www.tabletopstudios.com, www.adorama.com or www.bhphotovideo.com. I particularly like graduated (black to white) seamless background and I'd suggest when you get a background buy one that large enough for multiple uses. 

I have my tabletop studio on a large end table in a corner of my office. To make it easier to change backgrounds, I attached large alligator clips to the wall above the table. When I'm using the set-up, I place my subject in the middle of the flat part of the background paper and not against the wall. Then looking at the image on camera LCD monitor or  in the viewfinder, I move the camera so that the seamless background fills the screen and the work is nicely framed within it. Usually I shoot with the camera a foot or two higher than the tabletop, a little lower than normal eye level. 

The lighting for a tabletop studio need not be elaborate. If you want to, you can use natural light if you have a large north-facing window. You can just place the tabletop studio near the window and you are good to go. The only problem with daylight is that it is just that, day light, it isn't there at night. That's why I recommend that you get some sort of artificial lighting.

The lights for a tabletop studio also need not be expensive. I’ve used hardware store work lights with reflector housings, replacing the work lights with low-wattage coiled daylight fluorescent lamps. Ot you can buy yourself a pair of photo floodlights or you can get small electronic flashes (some larger photo stores sell these in sets of two “slaved” flashes for under $100.) Whichever lighting you choose, I'd suggest that you get light stands too, it makes it easier to postion the lights. That is one advantage of my end table; it is narrower than a normal work table and that makes it easier to place the lights close to the subject. Note: If you are using 250 or 500-watt tungsten floodlights, for safety sake, always have them at least five feet from the tabletop studio because of their high heat.

To set up the lights, extend the stands so that the lights will be two or three feet above the tabletop surface. Place the stands about two feet in front of the tabletop, with one on either side of the camera position and point the lights at the subject. Since a tabletop studio is small and the lights are close to the subject, you will find that you don't need very big lights to get good results. And since there is a lot of light, you can use lower ISO speeds. For good color and sharpness, with a Point and Shoot or Superzoom cameras I would use either ISO 100 or ISO 200 but with a dSLR I'd be comfortable using the ISO 400 setting.

Shooting things in a tabletop studio, I like to have my zoom lens set to a moderate to longish telephoto focal length setting. With the typical camera kit zoom lens, this is a somewhere a bit beyond the center of the zoom range to all way out to its farthest extension. What you want is to use what in 35mm photography would be between 90-150mm. Using these focal lengths has two advantages. First, they flatten perspective and throw the background slightly out of focus. Then second, they give you greater working distance between the camera and subject, making it easier to light things. 

I like to use a tripod when I shoot tabletop more to retain framing then for stability. If I shoot a picture and want to make adjustments, it is easier to retain the exact frame with a tripod then with the camera handheld. However, a tripod is a necessity if you are going to shoot very small objects. 

The tabletop studio is a remarkably flexible tool for getting good photos of small objects. You’ll need to practice with it and experiment with the lights until you find the best positions for them. Once you learn to use it, you will discover that the tabletop studio will open up the exciting world of small object photography to you.

In the gallery you'll find an illustration of a tabletop studio set-up and several examples of objects photgraphed in one. You can learn more about tabletop photography in my book "Photographing Art, Crafts and Collectibles" a PIXIQ publication.