Photographing a gold ring means photographing… the whole room around it. The photographer, the camera, the window, the ceiling: a shiny object is a mirror that reflects everything. And a transparent perfume bottle? It has practically no visible shape until you draw one for it.
Welcome to one of the most fascinating exercises in photography: packshots of shiny, transparent or reflective objects.
The principle to remember: you don’t light the object, you light what it reflects
On a matte object, light lands on the surface. On a shiny object, what you see are reflections. The work therefore consists in choosing what is reflected: large white surfaces for the bright areas, black surfaces for the dark areas. The photographer doesn’t photograph a bottle, they “sculpt” its surroundings.
A chrome object has no colour of its own. It has the colour of everything around it.
The tools of the packshot set
- The diffusion tent: a cube of translucent white fabric surrounding the object. Light passes through and wraps the product in soft, even reflections. Ideal for jewellery and small metal objects.
- White reflectors: they bounce the light back and create bright, long, clean reflections on curved surfaces.
- Black flags: simple black panels placed near the object. They draw dark lines that give volume and define the contours. They are often what makes the difference between an amateur photo and a professional one.
- Strip softboxes: long and thin, they create those elegant vertical reflections seen on luxury bottles.
- The polarising filter: it cuts some stray reflections, especially on glass or varnished packaging.
Material by material
| Object | The challenge | The remedy |
|---|---|---|
| Jewellery | Tiny, very shiny, stones to make sparkle | Diffusion tent, small reflectors, focus stacking |
| Clear glass | Invisible on a white background, reflections everywhere | Edges drawn in black by flags, or backlighting |
| Perfume bottle | Liquid, glass and label in the same object | Backlight for the liquid, strip reflections, several shots combined |
| Stainless steel, chrome | Reflects the camera and the photographer | Controlled white environment, tilt-shift lens or retouching |
| Varnished packaging | Reflections that hide the text | Adjusted light angle, polariser |
Glass: two opposite techniques
For a glass or a transparent bottle, there are two main approaches. On a light background, you light from behind and place black flags on the sides: the edges of the glass appear as fine dark lines. On a dark background, it’s the opposite: you light the edges with sources placed on either side, and they become luminous outlines against the black. Same object, two radically different moods.
Focus stacking: everything sharp, from the first to the last millimetre
In extreme close-up, the sharp zone is tiny. On a ring, if the front is sharp, the back is blurred. Stopping down heavily to gain sharpness ends up degrading the image, because of an optical phenomenon called diffraction.
The solution: focus stacking. The camera stays fixed, and you take a series of photos, moving the focus slightly each time, from the nearest point to the farthest. Software then assembles the sharp areas of each image into a single photo, sharp from end to end.
Tip If your product pages show half-blurred jewellery, it isn’t your product that’s the problem: it’s the depth of field. Focus stacking solves the issue.
The background and retouching
White background for an e-commerce site, gradient or texture for a campaign, styled scene for social media: the background is chosen according to the use. Then comes retouching, which is an integral part of the packshot. Dust (there’s always some), fingerprints, small unwanted reflections, assembly of several shots lit differently: on a shiny object, retouching often accounts for a large part of the work.
A small honest clarification: retouching invents nothing. It cleans and harmonises what the shoot captured well. A badly built reflection at the start can never be rescued perfectly.
At that dog, our packshot set lets us control every reflection, every source and every millimetre of sharpness, in photo as in video. To go further on the uses, discover our article on product packshots for e-commerce.
A product that shines, not one that reflects everything
Jewellery, bottles, glass or stainless steel objects: let’s talk about your products.