strobe lights for JEWELRY?

Please I would like to Know what I am doing wrong. I am shooting diamonds and gold rings. I have a

Cannon EOS400, Macro lenses Cannon 60mm, I have 2 strobe lights ( 50/60 HZ) which I think are using a

Halogen bulbs. I set up one stobe light on each side of a light tent.

Am I using the wrong lights for jewelry? I read somewhere that Daylight balanced bulbs and continuos

light are better for jewelry photography?. My shots end up with gray backgrounds or not enough light that

makes me spend hours in photoshop. Also I end up not having focus in all my rings which makes me lose

a lot of detail.

Any suggestion what could improve my lighting?

Would help to have one more light in the front like a sparkler light? To unleash the fire of diamonds?

Would that solve my problem or someone has a better suggestion? Thank you so much.

Strobes are flashes... halogen bulbs are continuous lights. Which are you using? If you ARE using strobes/flashes, how are you triggering them? It sounds as though you are having an exposure problem (regardless of which lights you are using)... and that's a matter of compensating with either the ISO setting on the camera, or the lens aperture. It would be easier to help if you were to post an example shot for us to see.

photogrpahing jewelery is one of the more demanding lihgting challenges a still photographer can under take. given your description of your equipment and the results so far, you have a very long way to go and it is difficult to know where to start. probably with the basics of getting large depth of field, then understanding exposure and then basic understanding of light and then how to control andlighting and then getting special lighting effects to do things like "unleash the fire of diamonds". Somewhere in there you have to get on top of color management and raw processing and sharpening and other photoshop editing skills.

 

No one said photography was easy, though many people presume it to be so. Still life photography is especially difficult to master: it takes a lot of patience and one's mistakes are difficult to hide.

 

Whether you use strobes or constant light sources is irrelevant to creating good lighting. Many people will throw money at the problem thinking they are buying a "quick fix" technology solution. But the problem isn't technological in nature, you have to learn how to make light and then how to use some form of technology to make the light you want, and then do it more efficiently.

Carla!

 

Photographig jewelry is probably one of the most demanding types of photography you can do because you are shooting at f/16, f/22, maybe even f/32 to get the necessary depth of field required for close-up photography. The Quartz Halogen lights are very hot to work with and they have to be at least 500 watts each to give you enough light to shoot at the above f/stops. Because you want the most detail possible, you should shoot at 100 ISO. Personally, I would use electronic strobes with modeling lights. Use the light tent, but get a set of good strong strobes that are strong enough to shoot at f/22. Also, you want to shoot everything in RAW mode. The Canon EOS 400D/XTi will do the job, image-wise, but your lighting is very important. You want a good flash meter to meter your strobe output. I would recommend either a Sekonic or a Minolta Flash meter. They are very accurate. It is not necessary to spend a fortune in equipment as long as the equipment will do the job and do it well. The background color behind your jewelry subjects will determine what and how they will look. Never use light colors in your background, use dark colors, preferably black velvet, or maybe navy blue. Again it is a matter of choice, but you do not want your background to lessen the appearance or rendition of the jewelry you photograph. Good shooting

For someone struggling to achieve better lighting results, I would <i>not</i> recommend strobe lighting as James suggests. You do <i>not</i> need insanely powerful hot(continuous) lights to achieve higher f-stops, just a sturdy tripod.

 

Buy some cheap hot lights from home depot, some white and black foam core, A-clamps to hold the foam core to your stands and then play.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. I never presumed jewelry photography to be easy,

but I may have sounded somewhat like that in my first post. I understand most of the

concepts in photography, depth of field, exposure, although I realise that I have to master

them in studio and get a good - basic understanding of lightning. See I studied

photography long time ago but never did much studio, especially jewelry.

The editing skill is not a problem as fortunately I have photoshop experience. Although I

can retouch I want to get the picture as most perfect as possible so it will require some or

little editing.

 

I just wanted to make sure the equipment I have is the right or suitable one for what I want

to do. So I can go on learning and experimenting.

 

I think the strobe lights are not strong enough because I have been shooting at a f 8 which

gives me shallow depth of field and in case of my rings too much loss of detail.

My set up is now 2 strobe lights (75W) that have a built -in modelling light (halogen 75W)

one on each side of a light tent. And YES the lights are very hot.

That's the equipment I have for now, not looking for a quick fix technology solution, just

wondering if that is suitable and how to make the most of it.

 

I am trigging my strobes by a sync cord and using a good tripod for the camera

I will post a picture for you to critique me.

This one had only the background quick whitened in photoshop, and it was taken with:

1/125 f 6.3 Manual ISO 100

Stone light is very important and is proving to be quite the challenge!

Anyway Thanks for all the time and help. Appreciate:)

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. I never presumed jewelry photography to be easy,

but I may have sounded somewhat like that in my first post. I understand most of the

concepts in photography, depth of field, exposure, although I realise that I have to master

them in studio and get a good - basic understanding of lightning. See I studied

photography long time ago but never did much studio, especially jewelry.

The editing skill is not a problem as fortunately I have photoshop experience. Although I

can retouch I want to get the picture as most perfect as possible so it will require some or

little editing.

 

I just wanted to make sure the equipment I have is the right or suitable one for what I want

to do. So I can go on learning and experimenting.

 

I think the strobe lights are not strong enough because I have been shooting at a f 8 which

gives me shallow depth of field and in case of my rings too much loss of detail.

My set up is now 2 strobe lights (75W) that have a built -in modelling light (halogen 75W)

one on each side of a light tent. And YES the lights are very hot.

That's the equipment I have for now, not looking for a quick fix technology solution, just

wondering if that is suitable and how to make the most of it.

 

I am trigging my strobes by a sync cord and using a good tripod for the camera

I will post a picture for you to critique me.

This one had only the background quick whitened in photoshop, and it was taken with:

1/125 f 6.3 Manual ISO 100.

Stone light is very important and is proving to be quite the challenge!

Anyway Thanks for all the time and help. Appreciate:)

If you can't increase the amount of light, your only other two choices (in order to get deeper depth of field) is to raise the ISO (which can make the image noisier), or change to a continuous light source that will let you get longer exposures (since you have a tripod that will work). You COULD combine the strobes with another light source, but you might have some color temperature mis-match problems.

Again, you don't need more powerful lights. Set up lights how you want them. Turn off room lights. Open shutter (30 sec exposure). Pop flash. Pop flash. Pop flash... ...Close shutter.

I too am trying to photograph jewelry for a local store and was not impressed with a lot of the images i have seen in local magazines, but after having a go last night i can see it is not as easy as it looks.

I am using 2 strobes camera left and right with softboxes and a white background (this is because they want todrop out the images to use for varied output(magazine,website,slideshow).

My main problem was that items themselves were far too small to give big file sizes after cropping and also getting to many specular highlights after pumping up the white bg in (curves).

Have had a play with some closeup filters tonight and tomorrow will have more time..hopefully i can upload and image for you.

regards

Keith<div></div>

Sorry...Exif data for this image is 125thsec f38 Canon 10d in Jpeg and focal length is 125mm

I had the WB set on flash but am tinkering with custom WB.

I have read that there is a diffraction problem with f stops that small and would be better using f8 or f11 but DOF would be very shallow.

I have since bought a Tamron 90mm macro lens and i find the dof is not as much of a problem..somr from last week

Keith, I realize what challenges we all face as photographers trying to photograph jewelry

with pro results. Unfortunately all the slick beautiful hi-rez jewelry ads and good online sites

that feature quality jewelry images, these products have post work and retouching that need

to be performed in Photoshop or other image editing software. The photography is only one

half of the equation, the image editing, the other half.

 

Your images are good enough to start retouching and then you can clean up any glitches, etc

hope that helps

Hi Steve

Thanks for your reply, i do have photoshop, what sort of retouching would you suggest..i have also added another image from my last shoot for a client.

regards

Keith

First the lighting should be right(in your vision)and not to try to do impossible things. General retouching it's all up to you or your client. I'm sure you have the look you want to have....