What I shoot, and what each type costs to shoot
Six types of product shot cover almost everything clients ask for, and each carries a different time cost, which is what drives the price. A white-background cut-out is the fastest: camera on a tripod, product on seamless paper, roughly four minutes a frame once the lighting is set. A styled lifestyle shot with props and a set takes closer to forty.
- White background cut-outs, for listings and marketplace pages
- Flat lay, shot from directly above
- Lifestyle and in-use, product in a room or a hand rather than on white
- On-model, product worn or held
- 360 and multi-angle spins
- Detail and macro, for texture, stitching and hardware
Cut-outs, flat lay and 360
White background cut-outs make up the bulk of my product work for London brands: clean, consistent, built for Amazon and Shopify listings. Flat lay suits anything better seen from above, such as stationery, cosmetics and flat-packed goods. A 360 or multi-angle spin needs eight to twelve frames per product and a turntable, so budget three times the shoot time of a single cut-out.
Lifestyle, on-model and detail
I’d rather shoot lifestyle work on location than fake a background in afterward, though a studio set works fine for smaller items. On-model shots need a model booked separately unless you supply one. Detail and macro frames, stitching, hardware, texture, run alongside the main set at no extra cost if I’m already on site. This overlaps with wider commercial photography once branding or a campaign is involved rather than a straight catalogue shoot.
Product photography prices
Product photography starts at £300 for a half day, covering fifteen to twenty-five products on white. A full day runs £550 to £750 and covers forty to sixty simple items. Per-product rates sit between £12 and £30 depending on volume and complexity: the more you book into one session, the lower the per-item rate falls.
| Booking | What it covers | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Half day | 15–25 products on white | £300 |
| Full day | 40–60 simple products | £550–£750 |
| Per product | Single item, add-on rate | £12–£30 |
| Monthly retainer | Recurring new lines, priority booking | from £250/month |
| Lifestyle set-up fee | Props, styling, set build | from £80 |
| Model added | On-model shots, model fee separate | from £100 |
| 360 spin | 8–12 frames per product | from £45/product |
| Rush turnaround | Next-day edit | +50% |
See full pricing across every service, or a full breakdown of product photography prices if you’re comparing studios. The honest bit: per-product prices rise for reflective surfaces, where glass or chrome needs extra lighting passes to kill reflections, for transparent glass and liquids lit from behind, and for anything that has to be assembled on the day. A flat-packed shelf unit costs more to shoot than the price list suggests, because half the session is a screwdriver, not a camera.
How many products a day actually is
This is the question every ecommerce client wants answered before anything else. Forty to sixty simple items, same background, same angle, minimal styling, is a realistic full day. Twelve to twenty if each one needs three angles per SKU. Six to ten if they are styled with props and a set change between shots.
I disagree with studios who quote two hundred products a day. That number only works on a copy stand with no editing: no colour correction, no cropping, no shadow clean-up. Skip that work and you either do the finishing yourself, or your listings look flat next to a competitor’s. See how many products fit into a day for the maths behind each figure.
White background and marketplace specs
Amazon’s “pure white” is a specific number, not a vague description: RGB 255,255,255, no exceptions. A light grey that looks white on your monitor will get a listing flagged. The product also has to fill roughly 85% of the frame, and the longest side needs to hit a minimum pixel count, 1600px if you want the zoom function to work on the listing.
Shopify is more forgiving on the exact white point but still wants consistency across a catalogue, since customers notice when product six has a slightly warmer background than product one. eBay sits somewhere between the two: less strict on frame fill, but it penalises watermarks and added text on the image itself, which a surprising number of sellers still do.
I shoot to Amazon’s image requirements as the baseline and loosen the spec for other platforms, because it is easier to relax a strict standard than tighten a loose one. More on getting white backgrounds right if you’re shooting this yourself in the meantime.
Lifestyle versus studio: and when you need both
Studio shots sell the product. Lifestyle shots sell the use of it, a candle on a shelf next to other things that make a room look lived in, rather than a candle floating on white. Most established brands run both: studio for the listing, lifestyle for the website and paid ads, and the conversion data usually backs that split up.
My honest counter to the usual advice: if you’re a small catalogue on a tight budget, spend all of it on clean studio shots first. A full set of white-background images beats one gorgeous lifestyle hero shot and nine mediocre product photos. Lifestyle earns its place once the studio set is solid and the listings are already converting, not before. See lifestyle versus studio product shots for examples of both done well.
Specialist work: jewellery, packshots and food product
Jewellery
Jewellery needs a macro lens, a light tent and patience. Three hours is realistic for eight pieces, once you count the dust-checking and reflection control on anything faceted or polished. It carries a higher per-item rate than a standard product shot for that reason. More on photographing jewellery.
Packshots
A packshot is a specific thing, not a general term for a product photo. It is the packaging itself, shot straight-on for retail listings and shelf-edge labels, usually with strict brand colour accuracy. See what a packshot actually is if a client asks for one and you’re not sure what they mean.
Food product
Food product photography is not restaurant photography. It is the bottle, the jar, the box, shot the way any other product would be, sometimes alongside a styled hero shot of the food itself. That crossover work sits closer to food and restaurant photography. All three of these carry higher per-item rates than a plain white cut-out, because none tolerate a four-minute-a-frame pace.
Stills and video in one session
Booking stills and video together in one session is the efficient option: one set-up, one lighting rig, one day on site instead of two. The real cost is in product count. Adding video to a stills session takes about a third of your available shooting time, so a session that would cover sixty stills-only products covers closer to forty once video is added.
Worth it if you are building listings and social content from the same catalogue anyway. Less worth it if you only need six hero products in motion, in which case book that separately rather than compressing a big stills day around it. See product video from £400 for what’s included.
Sending products, and what I need
Courier or drop-off both work from Shoreditch EC2A, easy enough from most of London, though I’d rather you courier fragile items than carry them across town on the Central line yourself. Send products at least three working days before the shoot date so I can check everything has arrived and flag gaps early. What I need alongside the products:
- A spreadsheet with SKU, product name and the angles required for each item
- Spares of anything fragile or single-use, such as packaging that tears on opening or anything with a seal
- Assembly instructions if the product arrives flat-packed or in parts
- A returns address and courier account if you want stock sent back rather than collected
I hold stock for two weeks after delivery of the edited images, then it goes back or gets recycled if I haven’t heard from you. Worth flagging in advance if you need it held longer than that.
When you don’t need a product photographer
If you have six SKUs, no site yet and you are testing whether the product sells at all, don’t book a shoot. A phone against a window with a sheet of white card behind the product will get you to your first hundred orders. Daylight is enough at that stage, and nobody buying in that volume is comparing your listing photos to a competitor’s.
That stops being true once you are running paid ads, listing on Amazon where image quality affects ranking, or your return rate suggests customers are buying something that does not match the photo. That is the point to book a proper shoot, not before.
Send me your SKU count and the angles you need, and I’ll come back with a date and a price. I reply within one working day, and most shoots go ahead within two to three weeks of booking.