@David: What is a light soft box?
SkyStrike has already explained this, but actually what I should have typed is a "light tent". Google for it.
There again, 2 light boxes or one light tent depends on how big your product shoot is. I'm not the best fella whom should be advising on product shoot, for there are photographers in this forum whom do this for living. But for most small or medium size products shoot I have come across in advertisements and photos, I find they are mostly well lit (unless it's to show off silhouette of the object for some low key theme). They are mostly done against a seamless background and also shows mostly no shadow.
I suppose you need to feedback on what kind of product shoot are you doing, or is it just that your hobby delight to show against still life products. Also you need to mention what is your target for your product shoot. If it's online, then I see your kit lens is more than sufficient to handle. At a small aperture with well staged lights, you can't differentiate between a high end camera and a low end camera output, same for lens. As long as your gears are functional, they look pretty much the same. It is even more true if your final image is a small at most 1024px at the longest end. A good image reduction using sharper mode in photoshop will give you a almost noise-free, sharp product image.
The key to a good product shoot based on my limited knowledge is the following
- good light stage (this applies to most photography works, but here we don't need the magic lights, we need a good positioning of light to create the necessary highlights and shadows, Bad lighting brings no feature to your product, and can also give a flat output)
- knowing your product features well (this come from the need to know what product you're shooting and what is the feature of the product you would like to show. There are also some well know rules to how some products should be positioned)
For small to medium size objects, I suppose focal length between 30mm to 50mm works. You can place your camera on a tripod. You can also shoot at any distance you wish as long as you have sufficient space to stand off. I don't recommend wide angles for product shoots because the perspective distortion will make products look weird. The longer focal is better I suppose with lesser distortion but you might need a further working distance which could be a hassle.
I don't see how a large aperture lens comes to be useful for product shoot when their background is staged and seamless. Perhaps others can enlighten.
Feedback before I comment further.
