Product Photography Studio Hire in London · From £35/hr

STU 22 is a product photography studio in Wapping, East London, with two rooms built for the two jobs product work actually splits into: clean, repeatable packshots on seamless white, and controlled lighting for anything reflective, transparent or liquid. Hire starts at £35/hr plus VAT, lighting and grip included, and you can be shooting within ten minutes of walking in.

Two rooms, every product style

Infinity Cove · 16ft × 16ft · 12ft ceilings · from £120/hr. An all-white cyclorama with no corner for a shadow to catch on. Sixteen feet square is the number that matters: it lets you push the product table four or five feet clear of the back wall, which is what makes a background go properly white rather than grey. Built for e-commerce catalogues, Amazon listings, fashion flat-lays and lookbooks.

Blackout Studio · 26ft × 19ft · zero ambient light · from £110/hr. Total darkness on demand, so the only light hitting your product is light you put there. Perfect for glassware, bottles, jewellery, cosmetics and anything reflective or backlit. Double-sided curtains split the room into set and backstage, so a stylist can prep the next twenty SKUs while you light the current one.

What a 16ft cove actually does for a product shoot

Most of the frustration in product photography comes from a background that will not behave. Shoot too close to a wall and the product throws a shadow onto it, so you spend the retouch budget cleaning up an edge that should never have existed. Light the wall hard enough to kill the shadow and the spill wraps back around the product and flattens it.

Distance solves this, and distance is a function of floor space. In a 16ft by 16ft cove you can place the shooting table well forward, light the background separately with its own head, and let the product sit in its own pool of light with a metre or more of dead air behind it. That is how you get a background reading a true 255 white in camera with the product still carrying real shape and contact shadow.

The 12ft ceiling matters too, and it is the spec people forget. It gives you room to boom a large softbox directly overhead for top-down flat-lays without the stand creeping into frame, and it is what lets you shoot a full-height product, a rail of garments or a styled lifestyle set in the same room you shoot tabletop in. One room, one lighting setup to learn, both jobs done.

Shooting to Amazon and marketplace specification

Marketplace main images have rules, and they are the reason a lot of listings get suppressed. Amazon wants the main image on a pure white background, the product filling about 85 per cent of the frame, no props, no text, no watermarks and no additional logos. Most other marketplaces follow a version of the same pattern.

The cove gives you the white. The practical workflow gives you the consistency, which is what actually costs money when you have 300 SKUs to get through:

  • Lock the camera on a tripod and do not move it between SKUs. Changing camera height between products is the most common reason a catalogue looks inconsistent on a listing page.
  • Shoot tethered. There is a tethering table and fast Wi-Fi in the studio, and catching a soft frame on a laptop at full size beats catching it two weeks later in edit.
  • Shoot a grey card at the start of each lighting setup, then apply that white balance across the whole batch in one click.
  • Set exposure once, with the background reading just under clipping rather than blown out. A background pushed two stops hot eats the edges of a white product.
  • Work from a written shot list in SKU order. A half day disappears fast when you are deciding what to shoot next while the kettle boils.

Reflective, transparent and liquid products

Glassware, bottles, watches, jewellery, cosmetics and anything chrome are a different problem entirely. These products do not really have a surface you light. They have a surface that reflects whatever is around them, which means what you are actually lighting is the room.

That is why the Blackout Studio exists. With zero ambient light, nothing gets into the shot by accident: no window reflection creeping across a bottle shoulder, no light leak softening the black you wanted. You build the reflection deliberately with a stripbox or a poly board, flag off everything else, and the result is repeatable at ten in the morning or ten at night. At 26ft by 19ft there is also genuine room to put a light a long way behind a bottle for a clean backlit liquid shot, which a small room simply cannot give you.

Kit included, and the full kit add-on

Every booking includes the default kit at no extra cost. For most product work this is already enough:

  • Lighting: 2× Aputure 60X continuous LED
  • Grip and stands: 2× Matthews C-stands, 5× C-stands with arms, 2× combo stands, mini boom, shotguns and arms, magic arms, knuckles, K-clamps, 8× sandbags, 5× light stands
  • Modifiers and colour: softboxes, umbrellas, hoods and diffusers, 2× poly boards with holders, gel bag and photography gels
  • Power: 2× 13A extension leads
  • Everything else: fast Wi-Fi, tethering table, private changing room with mirror, rails and steamer, and a kitchen you are welcome to use throughout your booking

If you want more light or more colour, the full kit adds from £200 plus VAT and brings in a Leica Cine Projector, Aputure Spotlight, Nova 300P, Godox RGB 150W and SL60W, 2× Lencarta Ultra 300 Pro, 2× Lencarta Smart Flash IV, 3× Godox MS300, and an Amaran package including T4C and T2C tubes, 150C, 200D, 100D and handheld Ace 25C units. For a hero campaign shot or a gradient-lit cosmetics set it is worth every penny. For a straight white catalogue day it is usually not needed.

Rates and what a product day actually costs

  • The Portal · from £35/hr: small packshots, content, flat-lays
  • Blackout Studio · from £110/hr: glass, liquids, jewellery, hero shots
  • Infinity Cove · from £120/hr: e-commerce white, catalogue, lookbooks

All rates exclude VAT at 20 per cent. London product studios typically run £40 to £150 per hour before lighting is added, and we publish the full market comparison in our 2026 London studio price index.

Included: the room, the default kit above, lighting, Wi-Fi, tethering table, changing room, kitchen and on-site support to get you set up. Not included: a photographer, a stylist, retouching, product handling or prop hire. If you need any of those, message us and we will point you at someone good.

Getting here

We are in Wapping, London E1W, open 08:00 to 22:00, seven days a week. It is a five minute walk from Wapping Overground, minutes from Shadwell on the Overground and DLR, one stop from Tower Hill and about twelve minutes from Liverpool Street by car. Five minutes from Tower Bridge.

In practice that means you are ten minutes from the City and Shoreditch while paying East London rates rather than central London ones, which on a full day of product shooting is usually the difference of several hundred pounds.

FAQs

How much does a product photography studio cost in London? Most London product studios charge £40 to £150 per hour before lighting. At STU 22 in Wapping, hire starts at £35/hr for The Portal, £110/hr for the Blackout Studio and £120/hr for the Infinity Cove, all excluding VAT, with lighting and grip included in every booking.

Is the studio suitable for Amazon and e-commerce photography? Yes. The 16ft by 16ft infinity cove gives you the pure white background marketplaces require, with enough depth to separate the product from the background so it reads as true white in camera rather than being fixed in post. There is space for tables, stands and a locked-off tripod so hundreds of SKUs stay consistent across a batch.

Can I shoot reflective products like glass, bottles and jewellery? Yes, and the Blackout Studio is built for it. With zero ambient light, the only reflections on the product are the ones you create deliberately. At 26ft by 19ft there is also room to place a light well behind a bottle for clean backlit liquid shots.

Can I shoot food and drink products? Yes. There is a kitchen on site you are welcome to use during your booking, which makes prep and resets much easier on a food shoot. Message us on WhatsApp with what you are planning and we will confirm the best room and setup.

Do you offer half day and full day rates? Yes. Longer bookings are priced better than the hourly rate. Message us on WhatsApp with your dates and the number of SKUs and we will put together the right option, usually within minutes.

Is lighting included, or do I need to bring my own? Lighting and grip are included. Every booking comes with the default kit: 2× Aputure 60X, a full C-stand and grip package, softboxes, umbrellas, poly boards and gels. A larger kit including Lencarta and Godox strobes, Amaran LEDs and a Leica Cine Projector can be added from £200 plus VAT. You are also welcome to bring your own.

Can I view the studio before booking? Yes. Message us on WhatsApp and we will arrange a viewing that fits your schedule, usually the same week.

Ready to book?

Check live availability and book online in under two minutes, or message us on WhatsApp with your product list and we will tell you which room to take and how long you will need. We usually reply within minutes.