Read our guide, 2025 edition, to learn how to plan a product photography lighting setup this year with the quick rundown of basics and our recommendations of lighting options.
The year 2025 is witnessing a major shift thanks to AI and is impacting how we used to do e-commerce and marketing. One of the major routines in both these domains is product photography, which is also significantly affected by new software technologies.
But the product photography still relies on good old-fashioned photography skills that require solid knowledge of camera bodies, lens systems, and, most importantly, being skilled in product photography lighting setup.
Sure, new software like Canva, CapCut and a new generation of AI editing tools (being released every day on the Appstore) have made product photography pretty much doable with a capable smartphone camera.
Still, the new AI-produced photos cannot match (as of now) the professional-quality product photos you will get with proper camera gear and a professional lighting setup. There is no shortcut to bypassing photography skills; like they say, you don’t just get a good photo; you make it.
Along with camera gear, your results in product photography are pretty much going to suffer if you didn’t give attention to your lighting setup. You can spend thousands of dollars on a product photography lighting setup that can perform badly or get professional-grade results from a setup that will cost you a few hundred dollars.
This is why understanding how lighting works, the lighting types in photography and which kind of equipment they go with is absolutely crucial, both for results and to save money. Next, you need to know which type of light (depending on source) you are going to use, as your entire equipment has to work with available light; without it, it's literally nonexistent for your photos.
For that, you need to learn some basics of lighting types in photography and which one relates to your use case. These types are classified based on their lighting source; most common is our beloved sun (deal for lifestyle product photography and natural shots), continuous lighting sources like LED lights (best for beginners as it removes guesswork), high-intensity strobe lights (used for jewelry, glassware, and reflective surfaces), and RGB panel lights which have incredibly evolved in the past few years and are very popular to get smooth backlighting and adding personality to product photos.
One such capable RGB lighting option is SIRUI B15R, a bendable panel created to match different objects with unlimited possibilities. The light has a wide CCT range with an impressive 1100 lux output, all packed in a next generation bendable design. Basically, similar to a gimball but with a light.
Having said that, all light sources we mentioned above, the most commonly used lighting source is the sun; it is free, it's everywhere, and it's easy to experiment with, but for product shoots, it does come with limitations, as it can be used only in the daytime and restricts you to use it with certain product photo types. That is why continuous lights are quite commonly used by most product photographers in both indoor and outdoor settings, as the new generation of LED continuous lights are smaller, portable, and efficient.
For professional-grade results while keeping the size of the light as small as your palm, the best continuous lighting for photography in 2025 is the SIRUI C150X lite, which delivers more than 5000 lumens as compared to similar class lights, supports different accessories, has a v-mount, and can be tilted.
Now, you know the basics. Below is our 3-point guide to plan a capable product photography lighting setup in 2025 with budget and performance in mind while working with your available lighting option:
1. Visualize your shoot.
Plan properly during your pre-production” phase, which is pretty much doing your homework i.e., you have to spend some time planning and visualizing your shoot of the product you selected. Every product has different requirements of backdrop, camera lens, focal lengths, lighting, and more.
Is your product suited for indoors or outdoors? What should be the vibe of the photo (fresh, retro, leafy, dry, wet, etc.)? Using any props and backgrounds will add more detail, or will it just add distraction? This is all your pre-production, and only you can do it. If you are not feeling creative, head to Pinterest to get product photography ideas of how competitors are doing it and implement your own version. Do all of this before you pick up the camera.
2. Common lighting setups:
Once you know how you want things to be and the types of light you want (explained above), the next step is to decide which product photography lighting setup is suitable for your product. The most common one is a 3-light setup for product photography, which uses a frontal light or key light, a side light or fill light, and a backlight. These three are generally placed at 45-degree angles from one another, forming a triangle on the set. This angle is not fixed though; you can move it according to your requirements for the final result.
Then there is a single light setup with just one continuous light source, which, if used properly, can do the job just as well for product photography; all you need is skill and a bit of creativity to use them. In this setup, you can use a single light and a V-flat white foam board, which acts as a reflector and also softens shadows. The best continuous lighting for photography in this setup will be the one with nice control over the entire range of luminosity as you are only working with one light here.
The two-light setup uses a main light, and the other provides the fill light, which is placed above or below the subject to eliminate any shadows. Another common setup used by professionals is gradient lighting, in which a gradient is made by placing the lights at 90 degrees pointed up vertically at different heights or at 45 degrees pointed directly down and then up at the same surface without changing the position of the subject. Another common gradient setup is using warm and cool lights to create gradients of two-color temperatures.
3. Treating your light
The most common way to treat your light this year is with soft boxes and reflectors. More popular are soft boxes, which come in different shapes for different goals of photographers and are made with flexible surfaces of reflective material. Both are great for filling in shadows and adding brightness to areas that need highlighting and are used with a continuous light source.