Taking pictures of your cans so often leads to a deception: if there’s not enough light your pictures will be too dark, using a regular light bulb adds yellow flares and shiny cans reveal anything that’s close to them. Using a flashlight is only a partial solution, causing dark and yellow pics now to appear too bright or with a glare.

As a collector of Gold and Silver Coca-Cola cans I’ve experimented a lot before I was able to picture these extremely mirroring cans in such a way, that the picture only shows the can, in its original colors. I’ve used the same camera setup for the rest of my collection, with stunning results.

Here's how to do it. You must surround the can by as much white material as possible and shine a strong beam of light at these white surfaces (indirect lighting). The best results are achieved when you create a small studio-in-a-box, like the picture below.

The sides are made of white carton that is bended round, so there are no corners that can cause reflections, the bottom and top of the box are made of the same carton too. Opposite to the position of the can there is a small hole in the side of the studio to allow taking pictures. The top of the studio has two bright lights, one left and one right of the can position. If you set up your studio like this your pictures will be amazing.

Wanna see the resulting pictures? Please check out my collection of Gold, Silver and Diamond Coke cans - all pictures were taken using this studio-in-a-box.