Photoshop elements is also good - it costs a fraction of the full thing, but contains most of what you’ll need.
Basically this thread is saying learn how to be a good photographer. So try reading some photography books perhaps. Or hire a professional?
Photography is a bit of an art, but you can learn the basics if you work at it. And most of the advice here seems reasonable. The trick is to remember all of it without having ot think about it. Too SEE like a photographer, not a casual viewer.
There is a lot of good and bad advice listed above. I was in the motion picture film business for 15 years so here’s a notes about those:
- Lighting is key but you can create wonderful shots with nothing more than sunlight through a window and, maybe one reflecting white card to fill in the shadows.
- If you must buy lighting for indoor shots, consider using a desk lamp that, preferably has a shade for directional control, but even on film sets, I’ve taped boards on the lights for control.
- For simple product shots, you probably never need more than two lights, maybe three, sometimes only one unless you use the sun as mentioned in 1).
- Equipment won’t make anyone good at this. I used to shoot one or two rolls of film every day for years. Learning how to take good pictures is no different than learning how to paint. It’s an artistic talent but you don’t need to get that good for simple product shots.
I found a tutorial which is excellent for digital products, you can find it here.
It may seem a lot of work, but it absolutely will make a huge difference. Good luck.
I managed to take some decent shots for an e-commerce site im working on with a decent dslr (nikon) using RAW format, with a flash ( in camera) and then photoshop for clipping away the background and sharpening,levels and re-sizing ( created a batch in photoshop to do this…one for the light coloured clothes and one for dark…this worked well as the photos were very consistent in terms of softness and levels…an saved me bags of time…i didn’t fancy hand sharpening 900 odd photos). My client was very happy with them. The time consuming bits was cutting all the pics out. 
Have a look at my screen shot: ( click the image once you get to image shack and it gives u the full res version )
Getting good pictures is really not as hard as it seems. You don’t always need to have a good camera either. A consumer one will do as long as you can get 5 or 6 megapixels out of it. You want to try to get the best picture you can so you have to photoshop less later.
If it is a large object like a piece of furniture, I would get large sheet of white paper, like an end roll from a newspaper company, they usually sell them to you pretty cheap, I get them anywhere from $2.00 to $5.00, depending on how large it is. You can normally tape it to a wall or shelf or something and put your piece in front of it. Also locating it near a window will give you lots of natural light, which can help your photos alot.
An even easier route would be to find a nice simple wall or something in the shop and just take your pictures in front of it. Then photoshop them to correct the lighting etc. I find that the white piece of paper does help though if you plan to photoshop your image out all together and put it on a different background, it’s alot easier to magic wand the image this way.
If it’s a small product like a watch or something you can get a lightbox and some small lights at a camera shop for pretty cheap. Find a good professional camera shop not Ritz or Wolf cameras they are oriented more towards consumers. At a professional shop you can find all kinds of lightboxes, lights, those big silver discs etc, and most of it is pretty inexpensive. I recently saw pop up lightbox for about $20.00 with two small lights for about $30.00 for the pair.
Good Luck
Jodi :0)
I worked at a photo studio for about two weeks while on leave from uni.
I learned how to do professional photos for magazines and the tricks they use to do them.
You will need some space, then the following:
1 - four breeze blocks
2 - a medium size glass sheet
3 - a roll of white paper
4 - a medium/large spot light
5 - a large spot light with a diffuser attached
6 - a very good quality camera on a tripod
7 - Make sure the room is fairly dark, no fluorescent lighting
Make a table out of the breeze blocks and the glass sheet. Clean the glass, then place the white paper roll underneath and have it going up at the back, say about 3ft (one metre).
Place the medium/large spot light on the floor and aim it underneath the new table, so light shines in.
With the other spot light with attached diffuser place this to any corner of choice at the front, near the spot light on the floor.
Now place the tripod with camera at the front, aiming down(ish) and take photos.
(If your really fussy) Take the very first photo in black and white. This will give you a perfect idea how the shadows, highlights, etc… will turn out before you shoot in colour.
Spence
spence noodle I’ll have to give these techniques a try.
Yes, require enough lights and good but light background
I manage a few eCommerce sites with ~8000 products and our setup is like the picture below. (I realize the blue screen was done horribly, I don’t actually do this part of the work)
Anyhow the lights are setup off the right of the frame and the reflective umbrellas(?) are used to reflect the light back on the product so it’s a diffused light rather then a hard light. I think the picture guy generally has a white board on that table so the blue doesn’t bleed onto the product (we sell a lot of white Christmas ornaments).
He also uses a tripod so every single product image is nearly identical. He also turns off the lights and closes the shades.
We wind up with something like this
He also adds a drop shadow to the images.
Lighting is, indisputably, the most important factor.
I drifted away from the “sterile” appearance, though, of using a plain backdrop and have been photographing in the outdoors. Specifically, I photograph my hand-made jewelry in the garden. Choosing flora with colors that complement the color of the jewelry, I get results like this
Of course, the single (strong) source of light generated by the sun is the one thing I plan to change. A diffuser (as many have stated) or, simply, photographing in the shade would be an improvement. In my case, I am trying to show off the brilliant effect the sun has on the Dichroic Glass.
Here’s another link to one of those tabletop photo studio things:
My thoughts exactly - take LOTS of pictures (with a tripod if you have one… a shaky hand can kill a shot!) and edit out the background. Once you edit out the background, you have a nice “object” that you can use for more than just a shopping cart.
[FONT=“Georgia”]I so need to try this.
:tup:
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If you try it can you take a picture of the setup?
[FONT=“Georgia”]Not a problem, digadesign.
I need to do some shopping first, though.
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…you couldn’t have ironed it? 
No way…as i said i had about 900 items to photograph…and i’m terrible at ironing…i quite like the creased effect
Thx guys, just a note, I’ve added another point that I had forgot (#7) and that is to make sure the room your using is fairly dark with no fluorescent lighting (turned on that is).
take a look at this:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html
I created one, take fairly good pictures.