DB Labs
Updated September 6, 2026
By Jack Smith, iOS Developer at DB Labs
How to Shoot Product Photos with an iPhone
You do not need a studio or a camera body to photograph products well. You need one window, two pieces of white card, and control over exposure. Here is the whole method.
What You Actually Need (It Is Less Than You Think)
A current iPhone out-resolves the DSLRs that shot catalogue photography a decade ago. The camera is almost never the limiting factor in a bad product photo — light and background are. Before buying anything, get these four things:
- A window. North-facing is ideal in the northern hemisphere because the light stays consistent for hours. Any large window works if you avoid direct sun.
- A white or neutral background. A sheet of A2 poster board curved up a wall gives you a seamless "infinity" backdrop for under $5. Avoid textured fabric — wrinkles read as dirt at full zoom.
- A reflector. A second sheet of white card, angled opposite the window, bounces light back into the shadow side. This single trick separates amateur shots from professional ones.
- Something to hold the phone still. A $15 tripod with a phone clamp. Handheld works, but you will not be able to repeat the exact framing across a product line.
Set Up Your Shot in 6 Steps
Position the surface next to the window
Put your table so the window is to one side of the product, not behind it and not behind you. Side light creates the gentle shadow gradient that makes an object look three-dimensional. Light coming from directly behind the camera flattens everything.
Curve the background up
Tape the top of your poster board to the wall and let it curve down onto the table without a crease. The absence of a visible horizon line is what makes a background read as seamless. Any hard corner will show up as a grey line behind the product.
Place the reflector
Stand the second white card on the shadow side, roughly 30–60 cm from the product, angled to bounce window light back in. Move it closer to lighten the shadows, further to deepen them. Watch the shadow side of the product as you move it — the change is obvious.
Lock focus and exposure
Frame the shot, then press and hold on the product until AE/AF LOCK appears at the top of the screen. This stops the iPhone re-metering between shots, which is what causes a product line to come out with inconsistent brightness. Drag up or down on the screen to fine-tune exposure.
Expose slightly bright for white backgrounds
The iPhone meters for mid-grey, so it will render a white background as light grey. Drag the exposure slider up until the background looks slightly brighter than you think it should. Getting this right in-camera saves far more time than fixing it later.
Shoot the full set before moving anything
Take every angle you need — front, three-quarter, back, detail, scale — before you reposition the lighting. If you re-light between angles, the images will not match on your product page.
The Shot List Every Product Needs
Online shoppers cannot pick an item up, so each photo has to answer a question they would otherwise answer with their hands.
| Shot | Answers |
|---|---|
| Hero (straight on) | What is it? Used as the catalogue thumbnail. |
| Three-quarter angle | What shape is it? Adds depth the hero shot flattens. |
| Back or underside | What are you not showing me? |
| Macro detail | Is the quality real? Stitching, grain, finish. |
| Scale reference | How big is it actually? |
| In use / lifestyle | What does owning this look like? |
Six shots per product, and the scale reference is the one most sellers skip and most customers want. A returned item because "it was smaller than I expected" is a photography problem, not a shipping problem.
Camera Settings That Matter
- Use the 1x or 2x lens, not the ultra-wide. The 0.5x ultra-wide distorts edges and will make a straight-sided box look barrel-shaped. Stand further back and use the telephoto if you have one.
- Turn on the grid. Settings > Camera > Grid. Use it to keep the product level; a tilted product on a white background is instantly noticeable.
- Shoot in ProRAW if you plan to edit heavily. It preserves far more highlight and shadow detail, at roughly 25 MB per photo instead of 2–3 MB. See ProRAW vs HEIC vs JPEG for the trade-off.
- Turn off Live Photos. They double your storage use for no benefit in product work.
- Clean the lens. A fingerprint on the lens is the single most common cause of soft, hazy product shots.
The Five Mistakes That Make Products Look Cheap
- Mixed light sources. Window light plus a warm ceiling bulb gives you two different colour temperatures in one frame, and no amount of editing fully fixes it. Turn the room lights off.
- Direct flash. The iPhone flash produces a hard specular highlight and a hard shadow. There is no product it improves.
- Busy backgrounds. Your kitchen counter tells a story about your kitchen, not your product.
- Inconsistent framing. If each product sits at a different size in the frame, your catalogue page looks chaotic. Mark your tripod and product positions with tape.
- Shooting into the sun. Direct sunlight is harsh and changes every ten minutes. Diffuse it with a white sheet over the window, or wait for overcast.
Where These Photos End Up
Product photography is only worth the effort if the listing does the images justice. Most platforms want square or 4:5 images, at least 2,000 px on the long edge, on a consistent background. Shoot wider than your final crop so you have room to standardise framing afterwards.
If you are still deciding where to sell, Shopify handles the image sizing, zoom, and mobile rendering for you rather than requiring you to prepare separate files per breakpoint.
Turn your product shots into a store — start free, then $1/month
Plus earn up to $13,000 in credits as you sell
Start your free trialAffiliate disclosure: the Shopify link above is a paid referral link. If you start a plan through it, DB Labs may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Whatever platform you use, the next step is the same: cull the shoot down to the keepers before the raw files pile up. A single product session at six angles and several takes each easily produces 300 photos, and a 50-product catalogue turns into thousands.
Cull the Shoot Before It Buries You
300 photos per product session adds up fast. Swype Photo Cleaner lets you swipe through a shoot in minutes — left to delete, right to keep — so only the finals ever reach your library.
Download Swype FreeFrequently Asked Questions
How do you take good product photos with an iPhone?
Place the product beside a window with a curved white background behind it, put a white card on the shadow side to bounce light back in, then press and hold on the screen to lock AE/AF so exposure stays consistent between shots. Drag the exposure slider up slightly so the white background renders white rather than grey. Use the 1x or 2x lens, never the ultra-wide, and shoot every angle before changing the lighting.
What lighting is best for iPhone product photography?
Diffused daylight from a large window, with the light coming from the side rather than behind the camera. Side light creates the shadow gradient that makes an object look three-dimensional. Avoid direct sunlight, avoid the iPhone flash, and turn off the room lights so you are not mixing colour temperatures. A ring light is the wrong tool here — it is designed for faces and puts a distracting circular highlight on glossy products.
Should I shoot product photos in ProRAW?
Only if you plan to edit heavily. ProRAW keeps far more highlight and shadow detail, which helps when correcting white balance or recovering a blown-out background, but each file is roughly 25 MB against 2-3 MB for HEIC. For a large catalogue that is the difference between a few gigabytes and a few dozen. Shoot HEIC if your lighting is already good and your edits will be light.
How many photos do I need per product?
Six covers almost every product: a straight-on hero shot for the thumbnail, a three-quarter angle for depth, the back or underside, a macro detail showing build quality, a scale reference, and one lifestyle or in-use shot. The scale reference is the one most sellers skip and the one that prevents returns from customers who expected a different size.
Why do my white backgrounds come out grey?
Because the iPhone's meter is calibrated for mid-grey and pulls a bright white scene down toward it. Fix it in-camera: press and hold to lock exposure, then drag the sun slider upward until the background looks slightly brighter than seems right. Correcting this at capture is far faster and cleaner than trying to brighten a grey background afterwards.