[AkG]

The cardboard trick:

I used to use this trick all the time in my earlier reviews (first 15 or so). For me I have a long chest freezer right next an "unused" wall that is perfect hight for laying most review items on. By thumb tacking in a large white cardboard / "poster board" I would get a nice whit background and by using another underneath the item I would also get a nice white "floor" BUT there would always be that annoying line of where the two would but against each other (as you got in some of your shots).

By simply pushing the floor poster board up along the wall so it overlaps the back (thumb tacked to the wall) poster board it gives you a near seamless transition which you see in most professional photo shots. This is a quick and dirty method which gives good results and results in less photoshop work, but is not as good as a real photo booth. You can pick up a good cheap "pop up" photo booth / light booth on ebay. I got a 3x3 for about 30bucks. This will take care of the background which has to be WHITE.

For lighting I use 4 23watt "daylight" GE CFLs from crappy tire (check the specs as not all "daylight" branded CFLS are 5000-6000. I've seen el cheapo's which were listed at 2500K in the fine print). Mine are 6000k so they can cause a bite of BLUE tinge to your shots but the white of the lightbooth filters it back to "white". With the posterboard I needed 6 - 8 CFLs to get the near the same level of quality, and still had to worry about shadows a lot more than I do now.

As Eldonko pointed out set your exposure to +.75 or +1 (you need to play with the results to see which looks better).

The big secret is the more work you do in the photo shoot the less you need to do in photoSHOP ;)

Take LOTS of pictures. I usually take anywhere from 3GB on a small cooler review to 12GB for a case review, and then just pick the best. Less can be more, as I rather 30 good shots than 50 w/ 30 good and 20 mediocre.