In the Field with the Savage Product Pro LED Light Table

If you’ve ever tackled small-product photography, armed with the wrong tools, you know how challenging it can be to capture photos worth the time invested in taking them. Approaching small-product photography with the right tools is a whole other experience. Depending on your needs, the Savage Product Pro LED Light Table might very well be one of the right tools for the job.

Photographs © Allan Weitz, unless otherwise noted

Available in a choice of two baseboard sizes, 15 x 15" and 22 x 22", the Savage Product Pro LED Light Tables feature narrow-profile, daylight-balanced, backlit baseboards and four daylight-balanced LED lamp heads mounted on 20" flexible gooseneck arms. Setup is pretty much foolproof, and you can be up and running in less than 15 minutes.

If you press and hold the baseboard’s flush-mounted, touch-sensitive power button, it becomes a dimmer switch, which came in very handy when fine-tuning the lighting ratios between the backlit baseboard and the four upper lights.

A word to the wise: For best results, avoid placing—or even worse, dragging—anything with sharp or hard edges across the surface of the light table, because it is extremely scratch-sensitive. Lift and place objects into position—no slipping and sliding! When not in use, always keep the baseboard in its protective nylon storage sleeve (included).

The design of the four lamp heads allows them to be positioned independently and angled in an unlimited number of ways. This allows you to light the entire baseboard evenly when photographing artwork or documents, or move them about for modeling the light when photographing 3D subjects. To further soften the light, a diffuser sock is included for each lamp head.

Each lamp head measures about 2 x 2 x 1" and contains 36 LED chips with a CRI output of 91. Each LED lamp has its own internally mounted rechargeable battery, so no battery replacement is necessary. Fully charged, they last about 40 minutes. For longer work sessions, the lamp heads can be powered by their respective AC chargers, four of which are included with each copy table. The power cords are intended to be used as charge cords when the table is not in use. The lights can be removed and plugged into an available socket. The battery run time is 40 minutes, so sessions shorter than that time can run solely off the batteries without the power cords being involved.

If you choose to go the longer route, it would be a good idea to plug all five of the LED lamps into a single multi-outlet extension cord, as opposed to running five individual extension cords to five separate wall outlets. Each charger cord is only about 28" long. (See below.)

We set up a Savage Product Pro LED Light Table in our corporate test kitchen, on top of some stacked apple boxes, and took it for a ride. Our test subject was a classic film camera (1946 Leica IIIc with a 1960s-vintage Canon FL 19mm/f3.5 lens mounted on it via a Canon Lens Mount Converter B). The resulting photographs are below.

Overall, the Savage Product Pro LED Light Table performs as advertised and, if anything, I was quite satisfied with the results. If I had to complain about something, I’d have to bemoan the slightly plastic connectors. I also wish the border frames of the baseboard were stiffer and less flimsy feeling. In a nutshell, I wish the physical integrity of the product matched its level of functionality.

Another issue has to do with the five power cords, which, as mentioned earlier, are only about 28" in length. To make things manageable, I plugged each of the four lamp heads and the base lamp into a single multi-outlet extension cord. Keeping one or more of the lamp-head power cords out of the frame proved to be an annoyance on a few occasions, but a few strips of gaffer tape resolved the problem.

Once I had my subject positioned and my Sony A7R II with a 55mm/f2.8 Micro-Nikkor in place, I began lighting my subject studio-style—one lamp at a time. I kept the base lit at full power to kill unwanted shadows and slowly maneuvered each of the lamp heads until I was satisfied with the scene in my viewfinder.

The bare lamp heads cast too much glare for my tastes, so I covered each of them with one of the supplied lamp-head diffusers, to soften the light.

As for the results, I’m happy and, if I were in the market for a compact copy stand with a dedicated lighting system, I would consider the Savage Product Pro LED Light Table, albeit the 22 x 22" version (I prefer the added real estate). If shooting small products is something you do on a regular basis, the Savage Product Pro LED Light Table is well worth consideration—if your goal is to capture clean-looking photographs of flat art or small, detailed subjects.

Do you have experience shooting small products? If so, does the Savage Product Pro LED Light Table address your needs? Drop us a line and fill us in on the details.