C-STAND TIPS FOR FLAT LAY PHOTOGRAPHY

 Let’s talk tips for flat lay photography. The number one piece of equipment that I recommend that you get to improve your flat lay photography is a tripod or a c-stand. But, how do you know whether you should choose a c-stand vs. a tripod…or both, and why are they even important in the first place?

I’ll break it all down for you in this post and tell you why I prefer a c-stand over a tripod for flat lay photography. But, let’s start with a little story…

WHERE I WENT WRONG WITH MY FIRST TRIPOD

I first bought a tripod about a year ago when I began my photography journey. In my excitement, I bought ALL the things. You know, every single piece of gear that I thought made me appear to be a “real” photographer. Tripod? Check. Everything you could possibly think of. Never mind I didn’t know how to use all of the things that I purchased, nor why I even needed them in the first place. 

In my rush to look the part, I made a number of rookie mistakes:

Neglected to carefully think through my selections.

Didn’t factor in quality.

Failed to consider the features.

Also, I didn’t even think through how I, personally, planned to use the piece of gear or tool I was purchasing.

With the various models available, these are crucial considerations to make sure the model you choose fits your current needs and any potential future needs you might have.  

Putting price of equipment above everything else (e.g., features, quality, current and future needs) was my rookie mistake.

Let’s take my first tripod, for example. I bought an inexpensive tripod that was around. (I considered it expensive at the time.) It included both the legs and a head that was attached to the tripod. My first professional use for that tripod was an interiors shoot. By that time, I had upgraded my camera to one that was heavier in weight.

When I got to the shoot, the head would not support the weight of that camera, so it wouldn’t stay in place. It kept tilting…which is NOT ideal for interior photography where you need the verticals (e.g., walls) to be straight. I had a lot of editing to do after the shoot. Needless to say, I only used it once. Talk about a waste of money! 

My first tripod definitely wouldn’t have cut it for flat lay photography. Had I known from the start that I was going to shoot flat lays, and anticipated that I would upgrade my camera and lenses to better quality ones, I could have saved up to buy the best tripod for my purposes. My goal with this post is to help you not make the same mistakes and to guide you with tips for flat lay photography in order to make the best decision for your needs when it comes to choosing a c-stand or tripod (or potentially both) for flat lay photography. But, first things first.

TIPS FOR FLAT LAY PHOTOGRAPHY: MY TOP 5 REASONS YOU NEED A C-STAND OR A TRIPOD!

If your goal is to shoot flat lays regularly, then having a c-stand or tripod really is a must, and here is why:

Ensures (along with a camera level) that your camera is directly overhead.

Allows your camera to maintain a consistent vantage point as you tweak your styling.

Eliminates camera shake (i.e., unintentionally blurry images) that is caused by shooting hand-held, especially when the shutter speed is slow.

Keeps your hands free to slide your hands in the shot.

Saves you from back pain from hunching over your scene while capturing the image.

TRIPOD VS. C-STAND: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

The main difference between a tripod and a c-stand relates to their primary and intended purposes. 

Most people are familiar with a tripod. It is a piece of photography equipment that is designed to stabilize your camera and is used in various genres of photography, from landscapes to portraits to products and food. 

On the other hand, a c-stand’s primary purpose is to hold or grip lights, scrims, reflectors and other accessories at various angles and distances to the set without getting in the way like a traditional light stand might. A c-stand also eliminates the need to have someone hold the reflector, for example, for you. Over time, photographers also began using c-stands to mount cameras for overhead shots or flat lays. 

A secondary difference is the way that the two are constructed. With a tripod, you extend the legs to get more height and widen them to get a more stable base. With a c-stand, the legs remain in place and low to the ground, and you adjust the body to get more height without compromising the stability.

WHY I SWITCHED TO A C-STAND FOR MY FLAT LAY STUDIO WORK

Reduction of Maximum Height

For a long time, I used this tripod for my flat lay photography. I love that it has a center column that I can position horizontally for overhead shots. Also, it is relatively lightweight and collapses to a small size, which is perfect for travel. At 6ft maximum height, I thought that it would be perfect for all of my needs. What I didn’t anticipate was that the height would be reduced to 4ft 8in if I used the center column horizontally and even more so (to 3ft 8in) if I widened the legs. This was fine for tighter shots but more problematic for wide ones.

You might ask, “Why widen the legs?” With a tripod, the legs go on the side of your setup. For some larger backdrops, you need to widen the legs so that the tripod doesn’t sit on top of your backdrop and cause potential damage. Also, widening the legs gives the tripod a more stable base so that it doesn’t tip as easily. 

The tripod legs got in the way

With the legs narrowed, I sometimes encountered a situation where the legs got in the shot, depending on the lens I was using. While I could compensate for this by switching to a longer lens, I like to make my lens choices based on the composition and image I have envisioned vs. logistical concerns. At other times, the legs would cast a shadow on my scene. If the legs were too close together, I found that I couldn’t position fill cards (e.g., white or black foam core) the way I wanted to bounce more light into the scene or block light from entering the scene.

For these reasons, I knew that I needed a different tripod option. However, my tripod already worked well for me in many ways. For example, it is perfect for 45 degree or straight-on shots as well as for interiors. It even works well for some flat lay images, especially if I am shooting a minimalist image with a long lens on a standard size (e.g., 18”x24”) backdrop. It is also highly portable and easy to take along with me when I deliver flat lay workshops at conferences. So, getting another tripod would only give me increased height and no other advantages.

IMPORTANT TIP FOR FLAT LAY PHOTOGRAPHY: ADVANTAGES OF A C-STAND OVER A TRIPOD

That’s where the c-stand comes in. In addition to the height advantage, a c-stand has the added versatility that I mentioned above in terms of holding lights and accessories. Plus, it has some additional advantages specifically for my flat lay photography. The primary reasons I prefer a c-stand include the ability to:

Get much higher above the scene:

This was important for shooting wider scenes as well as for using certain lenses (e.g., 85mm) that have a minimum focusing distance that was not conducive to the height of my tripod. If your camera is too close to your subject, the camera will not be able to lock focus, unless you use a macro lens.

The minimum height of my c-stand is approximately the same as the maximum height of my tripod. The maximum height of my c-stand is about 11ft, so I am now only limited by the height of my ceiling. Although the c-stand can extend far above my height, I don’t have to worry about reaching my camera because I shoot tethered to my laptop and control the settings from there. 

Set up two scenes simultaneously:

I am able to style one scene on the floor and another on a table. This works great when I have both a product shoot and a food shoot on my agenda. When I am ready to shoot the second scene, I just swivel the boom arm to the next surface area.

Leave my gear set up between shoots:

I don’t know about you, but having to break down and set up my gear every time I want to shoot is a bit annoying. I’d rather use those precious few minutes to begin styling my scene. No more tripping over my tripod legs or breaking the tripod down each time.

I keep my c-stand setup and just swivel the arm parallel to the wall or release the boom arm to rest vertically when I’m not using it. That way, I don’t bump my head on it and can walk freely around my office studio.

Slide large reflectors in on all sides for a bright and evenly lit photo:

Because of the triangular formation of the tripod legs and the length of my centre column, I was not able to position large pieces of foam core appropriately. 

Position myself to get my hands anywhere in the frame:

See reference image below. Without having to maneuver around the legs. I know longer have to practice being a contortionist.

Clothing Photography

 High quality product photography is essential for apparel ecommerce. For many customers, you need more than just a great product description—your images will determine whether or not they buy your product.

But essential doesn’t have to mean expensive. The difference between professional and amateur is only experience.

If you have an eye for photography and a modest budget, read on. This guide walks you through how to photograph a piece of clothing, with photography tips to keep in mind during your shoot.

Clothing photography equipment

The equipment you use in your shoot depends on your budget. You can keep spending low by buying a few low-cost items. Or you can buy more pricey gear if you want special lighting or displays.

Let’s look at the equipment you’ll need for your clothing photography shoot:

Camera

You don’t need the most expensive DSLR camera to take pictures of your clothes. New clothing retailers can manage shoots with a smartphone also. Use whatever camera you have handy, be it a digital camera, a point and shoot, or a smartphone. 

Tripod

A tripod eliminates camera shake—accidentally shaking your camera during a shoot. (It happens to everyone.) Simply attach your camera to the tripod, frame the product, and take the photo. It’s easy. Tripods are not a one-size-fits-all thing, so find a tripod that’s compatible with your camera.

Lighting source

You need light to take photos of your clothes. If you have a room with a window that welcomes natural light, you can shoot there. If you don’t, you’ll need artificial lighting, like a softbox. You can find artificial lighting products on Amazon.

Note: don’t get mixed up in all the photography lighting kits you find online. You don’t need the LED lights and reflectors right away. Keep your setup simple, and once you get comfortable behind the camera, you can introduce new elements to your shoots.

Foam boards

Whether you’re shooting with window or artificial light, there’s always a shadow side of the product. It’s normally too dark to produce a good image. You can place a white foam board to reflect light back into the shadow to brighten it up.

Clamps or tape

If you decide to shoot on a table, you’ll want tapes or clamps to keep your foam boards and sweeps in place.

Backdrop

Get a white background for your shoot. If you’re going to shoot a lot of products at once, consider buying a paper white sweep. Paper sweeps are huge rolls of white paper. You can use them to create white backgrounds to photograph your clothing on. If the sweep gets dirty, you can cut the dirty piece and roll out a new clean one.

An alternative to white sweeps is a poster board. You can find them at your local drug store or online for cheap.

Mannequin or model

Mannequins are a nice-to-have in clothing photography. An alternative is asking a friend or family member to model the clothing for you.

The alternative is a flat surface or table to take photos on. It’s popular for brands shooting flat lay clothing. This means your clothing is laid on the surface and you’re shooting from above at a 90-degree angle.

7 steps to photograph clothing

• Prepare your clothing
• Set up your photo studio
• Position lighting
• Style it
• Set your camera
• Take the photo
• Finalize in post

1. Prepare your clothing

Your products should look their absolute best in your images. It’s an unfortunate fact that clothing can become wrinkled, creased, and begin to look worn from storage and transport. Clothing samples face a particularly rough time, as they often cover a lot of miles and may not have been perfectly constructed to begin with.

Preparing garments to be photographed is a crucial starting point for photographing your products, yet many photographers skip this step and rely on Photoshop or free photo editing software to fix wrinkles, stains, and other visible defects. Don’t do that. Photoshop isn’t magic: it takes time and expertise to master advanced editing techniques, and excessive editing risks compromising image quality.

Try to capture your garment in a state as close to perfect as possible and use Photoshop only to add final touches and color correction.

Thoroughly examine your product from top to bottom, inside and out. Are there any tags, stickers, or other types of identifying materials that need to be removed? Do so. Has the product become wrinkled or creased during storage? Iron or steam it. Repair damages and remove distractions; for example, use lint rollers or tape to remove dust and strings.

2. Set up your photo studio

With a few items, you can turn nearly any room with space into a photography studio. You can get by with a camera, tripod, white wall, C-stand, duct tape, and natural light. If you have a little more to spend and want control over when and where you shoot, it’s worth investing in a few more pieces of equipment.

Make sure to clear all clutter from your area. You’ll want a clean space to stay organized and do the best work.

Backdrop

Always use a white or light grey backdrop to prevent distractions and ensure you capture colors as accurately as possible. Seamless rolls of white paper are ideally suited, cheap, and readily available at any photography supply store. 

Sweep the roll to the floor so that it is curved, preventing creases and distracting shadows, and fasten it with tape.

Using a stand will give you more flexibility in where you position your background, allowing you room to maneuver around the studio. If you’re on a bootstrapped budget, you can tape the seamless roll to the ceiling or a wall.

Position your product on a model or mannequin in the middle of the backdrop and directly in front of where your camera will be.

Camera

Your camera is a vital part of your product photography, but don’t make the mistake of assuming it alone will determine your success. It’s just one piece of the puzzle, and you don’t have to put your entire budget into it. We recommend you use a DSLR that has, at a minimum, manual exposure and aperture settings, or using a very inexpensive alternative right at your fingerprints: your smartphone!

Use a tripod. The stability will eliminate camera shake and ensure your shots are consistent, while also freeing you to use your hands on other tasks. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a tripod, but it’s essential that you use one.

Position your tripod and camera so that it directly faces the product. Most of the time, you will not move the camera throughout the shoot. For different angles, move the product.

Lighting

Natural window light is an inexpensive and high quality light source for any apparel photographer. If you have a large window and abundant natural light, great! It may be all you need. However, if you have the means, we highly recommend that you rent or invest in an easy-to-use lighting kit.

Having artificial lighting equipment at your disposal will enable you to shoot when there simply isn’t enough light coming in through the window. The added versatility can dramatically increase your efficiency, while consistent lighting helps you set a professional standard. For a single light setup, you’ll need a light head, softbox, C-stand, battery pack, and pocket wizard.

The “light head” is what you might think of as the light itself. We suggest you start with a mono strobe light head, called a “monolight.” This may be the most expensive portion of your kit—possibly more expensive than your camera—so take some time to research and find your best long-term fit.

A softbox is necessary to diffuse light and capture your product in an evenly lit and appealing manner. The C-stand will hold your light head and the softbox around it. A pocket wizard will sync your camera and the light, essentially turning your light head into its flash.

3. Position lighting

If you’re using natural light, position your product near a window where it can get even, indirect light. If you’re using a monolight setup, below is a diagram of a bird’s-eye view of an effective lighting setup.

Place one light source and softbox or umbrella at a 45-degree angle to the product so that the lighting on the product is soft and even throughout. Keep your camera directly in front of your subject. If you have placed the product too close to the background, you may get some shadowing. If this happens, simply move the subject farther away from the backdrop to achieve a clean, white background. Set your light source’s power to about half.

Manually exposing your image properly is usually just a matter of using your camera’s light meter, which you can find by looking through the viewfinder and adjusting settings to make the meter notches reach 0.

It isn’t so simple when you’re using a strobe, since there is no lighting for the camera to read until the flash fires.

Start with your shutter speed set at 1/200 or below and your aperture set at f-11 or higher. From there, you will need to take test shots and tweak your camera settings to achieve optimal exposure and focusing.

Allow time for recharging between flashes. Depending on the strength of your battery pack, your light source may not fire on time if you shoot too quickly.

4. Styling

Models are desirable because a live body helps a customer relate to your product and adds a higher degree of professionalism, but it can also make for an unpredictable process. Models make clothing come to life, but professionals are extremely expensive.

Mannequins

Mannequins are great because they’re affordable, consistent, and easy to work with.

Take time to style your product on the mannequin; if your garment looks too big, try fitting it closer to your mannequin by pinning it and tucking it until it fits properly.

If you’re concerned a mannequin may be distracting or cheapen your product, you can use the ghost mannequin technique in post-production processing. A few additional shots of each product will allow you to remove the mannequin from your product images and present a 3D image that demonstrates shape and fit.

Flat lay

“Flat lay” refers to arranging objects on a flat surface and taking the photo from above. It’s also called bird’s-eye view. Flat lay photography is a great alternative to mannequins and models and can help you create beautiful product photos that sell.

It’s a technique used a lot for social media photos. But you can use it for your website content as well.

Hanging apparel

Hanging apparel is used to show products at eye level. It’s budget friendly and is faster than the other techniques mentioned above. Hanging apparel involves hanging clothing on a hook against a wall or white background, then taking the photo.

5. Set your camera

If your camera settings are wrong, then no amount of Photoshopping expertise will be able to make your images look professional. Make sure you understand ISO, aperture, and white balance before you photograph your products.

ISO

Make sure your ISO is no greater than 600–640. Higher ISOs produce distracting “noise” or “grain,” which is grayish or colored speckles that make photographs look more filmic. The higher you go, the worse the noise will be. At higher ISOs the camera can’t capture as much sharpness, so details begin to look soft. Using a tripod will allow you to keep your ISO at 100 or 200 for optimal clarity and sharpness.

Aperture

Aperture, which is represented by the f number of your camera settings (e.g. f-16, f-2.8), controls focus. Generally, the larger the aperture number the more aspects of the image will be in full focus. Make sure to set your aperture higher than f-11; this will allow for all aspects of your products to be in complete focus.

White Balance

Have you ever looked at a photo that seemed like it was taken through a blue or orange filter? The white balance was probably off. Light sources have different warmth’s, creating what’s known as a color cast, which makes it difficult for your camera to determine true white. Your white balance setting controls how the camera interprets the colors it records.

There are many different types of light sources, but the most common are tungsten, fluorescent, LED, and natural sunlight.

You can set your white balance specifically according to the type of light source you’re using or set your white balance to Auto and let the camera decide. Whatever you choose, don’t forget about white balance or you may find yourself hard-pressed to try and recreate accurate colors in Photoshop.

6. Take the photo

At last, it’s finally the moment you’ve been waiting for! Direct your camera at your subject and press half way down on your shutter release button, allow your camera to focus on your subject, and then snap the shot. Adjust your camera settings throughout the shoot if you notice your images need more or less light. The more you shoot, the more instinctive your adjustments will become.

Shoot as many images as possible. You may want to shoot the front and back, 45-degree angles, left and right sides, and any details. Test some close-up shots to highlight any special details about your clothes.

The more shots, the better. You want lots of options to select your final images from, and having more images per product on your website has been demonstrated to increase sales. Customers will be able to trust their impressions of the product if it’s backed up in multiple photographs from multiple angles.

7. Finalize in post

After shooting, it’s time to prepare your product images for the web. The goal of post-production processing is to make your images look as professional as possible while maintaining optimal performance.

This is the simplest and most beneficial step to outsource, since digital assets are easily transferable and the time and cost savings are significant.

If you would rather do it yourself, you should ensure your post-production process addresses alignment, cropping, background removal, and color correction in order to maintain a consistent and professional appearance. Keep a record of your processes so you can develop a standard set of specifications for both shooting and editing.

Alignment

Make sure that your products are all the same size and are centered within each image. You want all of the angles, corners, and edges of your products to line up in relation to one another. The easiest way to ensure that your alignment is spot on is to create guidelines in a Photoshop template.

Cropping

Much like alignment, you should crop product images identically so your customers have a seamless online shopping experience. If you use guidelines for alignment, then cropping consistently and sizing images according to your website’s image specifications should be no problem.

Background

We used a white background, which is a recommended practice and even required by some marketplaces. You can take it a step further and completely eliminate possible distractions by removing the background. Removing the background will allow you more flexibility in web design and modestly decrease file size.

Color

Even with careful attention to white balance, some colors—like neons, reds, and pinks—are difficult to photograph correctly in camera and often need to be tweaked in Photoshop.

Inaccurate representations of colors can leave customers frustrated and dissatisfied, so take a few extra minutes to ensure that the colors of your garments are accurate. The bottom line is that you want the customer to see exactly what they will receive in the mail should they order your product.

There are a number of ways to tweak colors, so get to know Photoshop’s offerings and choose your favorite tool. After you have fixed the colors, make sure to convert your images into SRGB format so different browsers, computer screens, and websites won’t change the accurate colors you worked so hard to create for your customers.