How to Build a DIY Turntable for 360° Product Photography

If you do a lot of basic product photography, you might want to check out this video. In it, you’ll learn how to build and operate your own 360° product photography turntable, and it’ll only cost you about 15 or 20 bucks.

The surprisingly comprehensive tutorial was created by Jordan Carrasquillo of New Amsterdam Photo Video, and it covers everything from building your DIY turntable, to how you should use it, to post-processing the images you capture into smooth 360° video or an interactive 360° photo gallery.

All you need is an IKEA lazy susan called a SNUDDA ($10), a cloth tape measure (about $2) and some sheets of white 24×36-inch construction paper (another couple of bucks). Then, tape the tape measure to the side of the lazy susan, wrapping it all the way around until you’ve used up the entire length. The final product should look something like this:

Notice, Jordan uses what looks like a ball needle as a reference point so he can create smooth videos and GIFs, rotating the turntable exact, measured increments between each shot—about every 0.5cm for video, and every 5-10cm for interactive photo galleries.

And that’s it. The video goes on to cover some best practices on how to take and process the photos—how to center the object, how to prevent flickering, and how to quickly create a final product using Quicktime—but most of the people reading this are probably familiar with the “how” and more interested in the turntable itself.

To watch Jordan build the simple contraption from scratch, learn about his lighting setup, or dive into those additional details mentioned above, check out the full video at the top of this post.