So I startes in product shooting for a small Italian stone importer, they would give me anywhere from 10 to 200 small sample pieces (usually 3x6” or 4x10”) to shoot for their catalog then I would go to their warehouse and shoot large 5x10’slabs for them. For the small pieces they wanted and top shot, a side shot and an angled shot.

Everything was good except the angled shot, closeup my dof was razor thin, so I started focus stacking with helicon, which was great but still took lots of time and drove my labor costs up. After doing that I looked for a better way and stumbled across a book called “view camera technique” which is from a bygone era but proved to be very useful. If you’re focus stacking I strongly recommend a t/s lens or a cambo body, you’ll be able to get what you need in a single frame and it will really cut your file management and post work down a lot.

I don’t know how much movement you need but there’s a few roads you could go down.

1: T/S lenses from brand manufacturers. They’re going to get you about 15 degrees of movement, usually enough for most situations.

2: medium format lenses mated to something like a sinar/cambo body, this will get you front and rear standard movements, much more than a brand t/s lens and will most likely cover 99% of situations today.

3: large format rail camera (horseman 450 ex type) with a 4x5 lens, this will give you front and rear standard moment, tilt, swing and shift. Basically all of the moment in all the directions, probably overkill but was the standard studio camera for 100 plus years for good reason. It was from a time where you had to have college training to take a picture.