How can I reduce reflections on glass and stainless steel when photographing large appliances?

Question

I photograph large stainless-steel appliances with glass doors for product shots using a Canon EOS M50 and the 15–45mm kit lens. In our current workspace, the glass and metal pick up a lot of reflections from the room.

The company is willing to invest in equipment if needed. What setup, lighting approach, and accessories would help reduce reflections as much as possible when shooting large products like these?

user37321 · Accepted Answer

In a reflective surface, the reflections are of the surrounding area.

1. The bigger the object the bigger space you need

So, in your case, you need a really big space clean, let's say painted on white, like a photo studio.

Look how humungous and clean a photo studio can be. I think you need about the space to fit two or three cars.

A 90° corner could work so you only need to fix two walls. A flat surface, not an industrial brick. You can put white ceramic mosaics in that zone.

2. Put the furniture in an angle

So you reflect what is on the side of the furniture, not what is behind you.

If you use a wide lens, the elements that are reflected will appear smaller, which is not good because you need a bigger wall, so try to use a longer focal length and step back.

3. You could "fake" a big room

Using big pieces of white fabric, 1.5 m width and like 2-10 m long. Use stretchy material like Lycra, a tripod, multiple shots, and 2-4 assistants.

Take two large rigid metal tubes aluminum or steel. Fix the fabric and use them as a big banner.

Put the camera on a tripod, frame the product, concentrate the effort in protecting the reflection of one zone, let's say the reflection of one door. Take one photo. And DO NOT MOVE THE CAMERA.

Protect the reflection on another door, and take another photo. Keep doing this. Until you have all the faces of the product taken.

Use some more as a background.

Composite the images in Photoshop or Gimp. Add more background later, focus only on the reflections and the immediate stuff behind the product.

4. Or as your company constructs metal frames

Make some big metal panels that can be covered with the stretchy cloth to have a portable studio room.

5. Make a 3D model of them

The shapes are pretty simple... you could model them quite easily.

Important note

Product photography is an art in itself. We are not focusing for now on how to properly lit the product, only to improve to some extent the resulting image.

If you want to push this to the next level we need to think in terms of light sources, which will turn some of your white fabric into light sources themselves, but that will not only complicate things for you, but it will take some years of expertise.

Photographing even small reflective objects are some of the trickiest things to photograph. You probably need to hire a photographer to have great images.