The best Canon cameras and lenses for product photography

Product photography covers a large spectrum, from home-based businesses creating images for online marketplaces, through cafes and restaurants who want to showcase their wares, to big-brand advertising and ecommerce sites.

"Every company or individual has a different product, and you may end up shooting in different environments, either in situ or in a studio to show the item at its most appealing," says John Maurice, European Product Marketing Manager at Canon Europe. "You may be shooting quite general lifestyle product photography or very specific and detailed product photography. All of these factors will influence your choice of equipment."

To help with your decision-making process, John and Canon Ambassador Erik Tomašák, co-founder of Visual Gang, which specialises in advertising photography and video, list the best cameras and lenses for producing outstanding product shots and videos.

Capable of recording both 45MP photos and cinematic 12-bit 8K RAW video, the full-frame mirrorless Canon EOS R5 produces the exceptional image quality you'd expect from a flagship model. "The high resolution of the EOS R5 enables me to maximise the image quality I get from the lens," explains Erik.

"The EOS R5 also offers lots of scope for cropping and retouching," adds John. Thanks to the camera's large files, customers can pinch and zoom whilst browsing online to get an extremely close look at fabric texture and other product details – which is important when you are not able to physically touch or see the product in a store.

The full-frame Canon EOS 5D Mark IV is a workhorse camera with robust build quality and an intuitive interface that makes it easy to use. With its 30.4MP CMOS sensor, 4K movies and built-in Wi-Fi, it's a powerful tool for product photography. "It's an industry favourite," says John. "A lot of the commercial photographers continue to use it, although some are gradually moving to the Canon EOS R5."

A significant advantage of the Canon EOS system is that the colour science across the sensors and camera bodies is very much aligned. If you move between a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and a Canon EOS R5, you can rely on the colours being realistic. "The big commercial ventures want to provide a real representation of what the product will look like, because they want to minimise returns," says John. "They want faithful colour reproduction. This is where the Canon colour gamut is so important, as well as the ability to represent the tones and colours as you will see them when they arrive."

Part of the trinity of professional RF lenses, this high-quality standard zoom maintains a constant maximum aperture of f/2.8 throughout the focal length range. As well as boasting a 5-stop Image Stabilizer and Nano USM motor for fast focusing and shake-free results when shooting handheld, it has an advanced optical design to ensure a critical level of sharpness.

"The Canon RF 24-70MM F2.8L IS USM is an all-purpose lens that covers the typical standard-to-mid telephoto focal length range that you'd use for product photography," says John. "We never do product photography at particularly wide focal lengths because then it starts to distort the subject. When we've done product photography of our own cameras, if we shoot them at 35mm or wider then the camera or the lens looks disproportionate and too large at the front. It's almost impossible to modify and looks unnatural to the viewer. Instead, we photograph at 50mm or slightly longer for a more natural rendition of the product."

Tilt-and-shift lenses are beloved by professional architecture and landscape photographers, but the Canon TS-E 90mm f/2.8L Macro's close-focusing ability makes it the perfect precision lens for product photography too.

"TS-E lenses enable perspective control and they also let you adjust the plane of focus. This can be particularly useful for dealing with logos," says John. "Even at Canon when we do product photography, we want the front of the lens to be sharp as well as the front of the camera. To achieve this, you'd traditionally need to stop down the aperture. But with a tilt-shift lens, you can potentially overcome that somewhat by tilting the plane of focus."

The Canon RF 85mm F2 MACRO IS STM has a classic full-frame portrait focal length, making it a go-to lens for head-and-shoulders fashion product shots. It's a compact lens that's easy to accommodate in any setup and it benefits from a macro function that lets you focus as close as 35cm from a product. It's a very sharp lens too.

"The standard zooms won't allow you specialist control or some of the additional magnification that is sometimes required," explains John. "That's where the TS-E and macro lenses come in because of their closer focusing distances."

Both the TS-E 90mm f/2.8L Macro and the RF 85mm F2 Macro IS STM have half life-size macro capability, enabling you to capture jewellery and other tabletop products in close-up detail.

When it's attached to a full-frame camera, a 50mm lens gives a similar perspective to that of the human eye, which lends product photographs a natural look. The Canon RF 50mm F1.2L USM offers the same fast aperture as the classic Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM, giving you the ability to focus the viewer's attention on the product and away from the rest of the scene.

Erik chose a Canon RF 50mm f/1.2L USM mounted on a Canon EOS R5 to take the promotional shots in this article. "The client's brief was easy," he says. "Create the most delicious photos of a new cafe. I had to capture the atmosphere of the location – although not too much of it, as the place wasn't 100% finished. The combination of a fast 50mm lens and full-frame camera gave a natural perspective and allowed me to capture a 50:50 ratio between the product and the place.

If you need a powerful but highly portable light source for your product photography, consider the Canon Speedlite EL-1 professional flashgun. Able to deliver up to 335 shots at full power, it features an active cooling system to reduce the risk of overheating. Its rechargeable Li-ion and accurate battery level indicator makes it easy to keep on top of power management too.

"With its guide number of 60, it's a very powerful Speedlite as well," says John. "But you've also got very wide control over the power. Sometimes with product photography, you only need a glint of light, particularly when photographing optical products or objects that reflect light."

The Speedlite EL-1 has a wide range of power levels – right down to 1/8192, should you need it – and a built-in modelling light with both brightness and colour temperature controls.