The Bare Minimum Product Photography Kit That Actually Works (Don Giannatti's Starter List, Expanded)
A few years ago I helped a friend overhaul her Etsy shop. The products were genuinely beautiful. The photos were killing her sales. I spent one afternoon reshooting everything with a handful of stands, some DIY scrims, and a single speedlight, and within two months she messaged me saying her conversion rate had nearly doubled. That experience is why I keep coming back to the question of minimum viable gear. Not the dream kit. The kit that actually gets you selling.
That’s exactly what Don Giannatti addresses in this CreativeLive tutorial, and it’s one of the most honest gear conversations I’ve seen aimed at beginners. No sponsorships clouding the recommendations, no aspirational wish lists. Just a working photographer telling you what to buy first. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube and then come back here, because I want to expand on each recommendation with the specifics that beginners usually have to figure out the hard way.
The advice runs in a deliberate order: cheap structural gear first, then your primary light source, then glass, then the tethering setup, and finally the upgrades that matter when you’re ready to level up. Follow that sequence and you’ll avoid the classic mistake of spending big on a camera body while your lighting situation is still chaos.
Step 1: Build Your Structural Foundation with Stands, Booms, and Clamps
Don listing four stands and two booms as starter gear
Four light stands and two boom arms form the skeleton of a tabletop setup. The stands hold your lights and scrims. The booms let you position a light source directly overhead, which is essential for flat lays and hero shots where you want even, shadow-controlled illumination. Mini booms work fine at this stage. Don’t let the word “mini” fool you into thinking they’re a compromise. For table-height product work, they’re often more practical than full-size booms because they’re easier to reposition quickly.
The clamps and clothespins are the part people skip and then regret. Don buys them in bulk whenever they go on sale at the hardware store, and I do the same thing. I have a small bin on my shooting table that’s just clamps. They hold fabric backgrounds taut, pin scrims at angles, secure bounce cards, and solve about a dozen small problems per shoot. At roughly a dollar each, they are the highest return-on-investment item in this entire list.
Step 2: Make or Buy Simple Scrims for Light Control
Reference to DIY scrims built for the tutorial
Scrims are translucent panels that sit between your light source and your subject. They diffuse harsh light into something softer and more wrappable. Don references scrims he built specifically for this tutorial, and the build is genuinely straightforward: a PVC or foam board frame with ripstop nylon or white spandex stretched across it. A 24x24 inch panel costs under fifteen dollars in materials.
The reason scrims matter more than most beginners expect is control. A bare speedlight or LED panel throws light in a cone. A scrim spreads that cone into a broad, soft source that wraps around curved surfaces like bottles, cans, and jewelry. Without diffusion, you get hot spots and specular reflections that make inexpensive products look cheap even if they aren’t.
Step 3: Invest in the Westcott Apollo 28 as Your Primary Light
Don recommending the Westcott Apollo 28 without reservation
This is the one place in the gear list where Don stops hedging and makes a direct call. The Westcott Apollo 28 is a softbox that mounts directly over a speedlight without needing a light stand adapter or a complex rigging system. It folds out like an umbrella and creates a contained, directional soft light source with almost no setup time.
If budget allows, he recommends going straight to the Apollo 50 instead. I shoot with both. The 50 is noticeably better for anything larger than a shoe box, and the difference in light quality on textured surfaces like fabric, wood, or ceramic is real. Don mentions using the Apollo 50 with an off-brand speedlight at half power and getting f/16 to f/22 at ISO 800 shooting food all day. That’s a useful data point: you do not need a flagship flash to get sharp, well-exposed product images. A mid-range manual speedlight in the $80 to $120 range handles this job cleanly.
Step 4: Choose a 35mm Equivalent Lens (or 24mm on Crop Sensor)
Don specifying lens focal length for tabletop work
Lens choice for tabletop photography is less about maximum aperture and more about how much the focal length distorts your subject at working distance. Longer focal lengths compress perspective and minimize edge distortion, which is why many product photographers default to 85mm or longer. But Don’s recommendation of a 35mm equivalent on full frame, or 24mm on a crop sensor body, is worth understanding before you dismiss it.
At tabletop distances, a 35mm equivalent gives you enough working room between the lens and the product that you’re not crowding your lights. It also allows you to include more environmental context, which matters for lifestyle product shots. Some photographers build their entire practice around a single focal length and develop an eye so consistent their catalog feels unified. If you’re just starting, one sharp, moderately wide prime will take you further than a bag of zoom lenses you’re constantly second-guessing.
Step 5: Set Up Tethered Shooting to a Monitor
Don mentioning tethered shooting into a display
Shooting tethered means your camera sends each image directly to a computer or tablet as you shoot, so you’re reviewing on a large, calibrated screen instead of a two-inch LCD. For product photography this isn’t optional at a professional level. The difference between a slightly soft focus and a sharp one, or between a color that’s close and one that matches the actual product, is invisible on a camera back and obvious on a monitor.
Capture One and Lightroom both handle tethering well. If you’re working solo, set your tethered display so you can glance at it without walking away from the table. The workflow becomes: adjust, shoot, review, adjust again. That iteration loop is where the quality actually happens.
Step 6: Plan Your Upgrade Path - Tilt-Shift Lens and High-Megapixel Body
Don outlining next-level gear investments
When you’re ready to invest further, the two upgrades Don points to are a tilt-shift lens and a high-megapixel sensor body. A tilt-shift lens lets you control the plane of focus independently of the camera’s position, which means you can get front-to-back sharpness on a long product like a perfume bottle or a cutting board without extreme diffraction from stopping all the way down to f/22. It’s a technique tool, not a vanity purchase.
The megapixel argument is specific to product and still life work. Unlike portrait photography where extreme resolution can be unflattering, high-resolution files from product shoots let clients crop into corners, repurpose images at billboard scale, and examine fine detail on packaging. A 45 or 50 megapixel file gives an art director options. A 24 megapixel file at f/16 is still excellent, but there’s a ceiling you’ll hit faster than you expect once clients start asking for print usage.
What I’d Add from My Own Setup
The one thing missing from this starter list is a second small light source, even a cheap LED panel, positioned behind the subject. Rim lighting separates products from backgrounds and adds the kind of dimensionality that makes a shot look polished rather than flat. I’ve had a small LED panel in my kit since the beginning and I reach for it on probably sixty percent of my shoots. It costs less than the clamps you’ll buy in bulk. Start simple, but leave room in your thinking for that second light earlier than you expect to need it.
The single most important lesson in Don’s framework is sequencing. Most beginners overbuy camera bodies and underbuy lighting control. Get the stands, the booms, the scrims, and the Apollo first. The camera you already own will outperform your current lighting setup for longer than you think. Build the light, then upgrade the capture.
Watch the full tutorial on YouTube and pay particular attention to how Don talks about the scrims he built. Understanding why diffusion works will change how you look at every light source you ever use.