Automated Product Photography: Case Study – 10 Million Photos!

Studio 727, a Slovakian production company, took on an extraordinary automated product photography project, capturing over 10 million photos. The goal was to document Slovakian museum artefacts, located across 55 locations nationwide, in stunning 360-degree panoramic detail, allowing online viewers to explore these relics in full.

PHOTO LOGISTICS – SHOOTING AND MOVING

The scale of the project presented significant logistical challenges. With 55 sites to visit, the task involved photographing an extensive range of museum artefacts, each with unique shapes and sizes. The complexities didn’t stop there—getting the equipment inside historic museum buildings, setting up shoots with the right lighting, backgrounds, and tools, added layers of difficulty.

Each artefact required 144 photos (four angles, with each elevation captured in 36 images), totalling 72,000 shots per item. Multiply that by the 144 artefacts, and the result was an astonishing 10 million photos that needed to be taken.

Time constraints further complicated the project. Funded by a government grant and the EU, the project had strict deadlines that left little room for delay. This made the need for highly automated, sophisticated equipment crucial to meeting both the scale and the timeline of the task.

For a closer look at the robotics used in this impressive undertaking, check out the case study video highlighting the automated photo-taking process.

See our Orbital Automated Product Photography Rig in action here.