There are a million ways to set up products for photography. This is just one of the ways I set it up and it seemed to work out ok. If you want to shoot static product images there are a few things to keep in mind.
If your item has any sort of reflection, anything in the room you are shooting can possibly show up in that reflection. Nothing is worse than opening your shots up on a screen bigger than your camera's LCD and finding your "focus face" and camera right in the middle of it. To make sure that doesn't happen to easy steps to take are:
USE A ZOOM LENS - GREATER THAN 100mm IF POSSIBLE
This will allow you to stand back farther than what the object will reflect when hit with light.
TURN OFF THE ROOM LIGHTS - ONLY USE THE STROBE'S
This is kind of a given. This allows you to control the light by only using what light you produce yourself and put in the direction that you want it to hit. Plus those darker items in the room won't show up in a reflection.
BOUNCE light onto the subject as much as possible. If you are pointing lights at a refective surface, that light will create "hot points" on your product. Meaning the area you are pointing a light at will have the direct hit of light causing it to be blown out and not even. For an example....pull out your camera phone and take a picture of yourself in the mirror with the flash on. You will see what I mean.
In the images above I am using Alienbee's B800 lights. They are super nice to use, but you do not need them. I photographed a whole product line with just off camera flashes before. You can also use cheap clamp on work lights that are found in hardware stores.
