You will need:

1 Digital Camera of around 2-3 megapixels with attachments such as USB cable, software, etc.
1 Telescopic Tripod (not the expensive one, the $20 wal-mart 4 footer is fine)
1 or 2 Craft foam boards, color of your choice, white is best
1 clamp on type light with 75 wt bulb
knife, tape, etc.

This little mini studio works great for small items up to 12" x 12" or so. First get familiar with your camera, find the macro (close) mode and get it screwed onto the tripod. Build a box 24" square using the foam board and razor knife, but leave one wall out so you wind up with a 3 sided box with top and bottom. Tape the panels together neatly with clear packing tape, avoiding any gaps or scraggley edges. Find a place out of the way and sit the box up level with the lens of the camera, which is on it's adjustable tripod. Insert your product into the box and center it on the floor of the box. You'll now need your light, turn it on and begin experimenting with different light angels. Depending on the desired effect, you have about 1,000 possible light variations on the same exact product. I take pictures of cigars, so clarity of the cigar wrapper is key, but even the most beautiful and supple wrapper can look bad in the wrong angle of light. The cigar bands are also a consideration, since many of them are foil coated and shiny. You dont want a glare, but at the same time you want to promote the brightness and color. A light from directly above the cigars brings out a bright, highly detailed image of the wrapper, but casts shadows down the cigar a mile long of even the smallest bump...making the cigar wrapper look less attractive than with the naked eye, certainly not the purpose when trying to sell a product to a customer via photos. A light from either side makes the cigar bands glare one sided which just doesnt work. I have found that the best placement of the item is about 1/3 of the way into the foam box, camera at dead center of the item(most digitals have cross hair type markers for easy alignment), and the light just about a foot above the camera shining down at a 45 degree angle onto the object(this method does require light from the camera's flash as well as the mobile light source, so make sure you have the flash enabled). Experiment moving the light farther and farther away until the images turn out the brightness you prefer. For me it's about 18-24".

Now you can upload your images to your computer and open them into a photo editor like adobe photoshop or my favorite, Ulead Photo Express. This program will actually straighten and crop your images in 2 clicks. Resize your image and keep in mind that the larger the picture and more detail you want, the slower the image will load once online. I usually save for the web at around 350 x 200 pixels with an overall file size of 15k. You can manipulate the save as quality under the settings feature of the software. A few swipes of the white, fuzzy edged brush to mask any shadows or other imperfections on the nearly seamless white background, adjust the brightness if necessary, increase the sharpness by 1-2 degrees, and name/save your photo ie. book.jpg

book.jpg is now ready for publishing on the web. One last tip, if you want tiny thumbnails versions of your products, just momentarily resize the image down to 75 pixels tall and save it as the same filename but add a small "s" for small to the beginnig of the filename ie. sbook.jpg, which simplifies the html code writing process immensely. You can write the link and image src code with the same exact image name, just with an added s where you want the thumbnail image to appear. Make the thumbnail the link to the full sized image by using the "a href" attribute around the "s" thumbnail, and youre done. Make sure you add "click here for larger image" or something to that effect so your customers know for sure the larger image is available. Your customers will thank you for the ease of navigation.

Copyright Ed Brown - http://www.tarheelcigars.com