A lot of help needed with photographing jewelery!- problems with background

[andrea_patterson]

<p>Hi there,<br>

I am just looking for help and tips on photographing jewelery (as much detail as possible- I have no clue!!). I was wondering how you would go about achieving an image like the ones below!<br>

Thanks in advance for any help!<br>

<a href="http://www.monsoon.co.uk/content/ebiz/monsoon/invt/68276940/68276940_m1.jpg">http://www.monsoon.co.uk/content/ebiz/monsoon/invt/68276940/68276940_m1.jpg</a><br>

<a href="http://www.monsoon.co.uk/content/ebiz/monsoon/invt/44018101/44018101_m1.jpg">http://www.monsoon.co.uk/content/ebiz/monsoon/invt/44018101/44018101_m1.jpg</a></p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Although the technique used to light and shoot those necklaces is important, there's no question that those have been handled in post production to help "float" the objects.<br /><br />Most likely they were shot on a white translucent surface with a light source <em>below</em> that surface, and the rest of the light was probably handled with a typcal product shooting tent and some evenly spaced light sources - two would probably do. That would explain the (frankly speaking) blah, boring, flat light. Not that there's anything wrong with boring when you're simply trying produce a no-nonsense reference shot like that - sometimes a bit of sculpting in the light is a bad fit with other things showing on the catalog or web page. </p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>If you search here on PN for "jewelry" you will find several threads in the last couple of months with suggestions about the tools and techniques of jewelry photography.<br>

I suggest you buy and study the book "Light - Science & Magic" to learn how light works, then practice the principles demonstrated in the book, as a first step.<br>

As Matt says, flat boring pictures of jewelry are fairly easy to do, but to make a piece look like a Tiffany or Cartier ad takes a great deal of work and practice.</p>

<p><Chas><br /><br /></p>

[JAPster]

<p>Hi Andrea...<br>

Here are some practical pointers you might find helpful.</p>

<p>1) Stabilize the Camera - A jewelry shoot is stable enough to allow you oppurtunity to use a tripod to stabilize the camera. Got a tripod? If so, plan to use it to position the camera exactly where the lens needs to be to get the perspective and point of view that you want. The tripod can hold camera and lens absolutely still while the exposure is being made. That will greatly contribute to a very sharp image. A very sharp image will reveal the most amount of small detail.</p>

<p>2) Use the self timer to trigger the shot - Just about every camera has a self timer delay. This little function can be set to delay the taking of the picture from 2 to 10 seconds. When used in conjunction with the tripod, it can allow you to press the shutter button and then take your hands off the camera. Ten seconds later and it takes the shot. In that 10 seconds, the camera will have stopped vibrating, and again this contributes to the sharpest possible image with maximum detail.</p>

<p>3) Frame it up carefully - how you frame up the subject (in your case, a piece of fine jewelry) is critical if you really want maximum small detail. In a nutshell, the more you allow the piece of jewelry to fill the viewfinder (as you look through the VF), the more pixels will be used to provide the image resolution of the subject. In other words, if you choose a close-up perspective, one where the jewelry fills the VF, then more pixels are used to 'paint' or 'draw' the small details of the piece. And because more pixels are being used, the small details are rendered more sharply, distinctly, clearly.</p>

<p>4) Consider the effect the aperture has on your DOF. - You need enough light on the subject so that you can use a medium size aperture - like f5.6, for example. A medium size aperture will result in a large enough DOF so the whole piece of jewelry will be in sharp focus. And again, if everything is in sharp focus, you will see many fine details in the final image. If you dont have enough light, then the camera may select the largest aperture the lens can deliver, but the correspong DOF will be quite shallow. A shallow DOF may result in only some parts of the jewelery piece being in sharp focus. (Probably not what you want.)</p>

<p>5) Pick your precise focus point carefully. A rule of thumb is that about 1/3 of the available DOF will extend in front of the precise focus point. And the remaining 2/3 of the DOF will extend behind the precise focus point. If you keep that in mind, you can use it to your advantage by picking a precise focus point on the subject, so that the whole piece is within the whole DOF. This will result in the whole piece being reasonably sharp and clear, and the precise focus point should be precisely sharp and clear.</p>

<p>6) Use diffused lighting to avoid strong glare spots. You can make diffused lighting easy enough by getting some yards of white ripstop nylon (available from fabric stores) and taping it over a sunny window. Then position a table in front of that window and cover it with some elegant fabric to serve as a nice background. Then place the jewelry piece on that. The diffused sunlight will bathe the piece and provide enough light for a good picture and the shadows will be minimized.</p>

<p>In addition, you can use your pop-up flash or a hotshoe flash to provide frontal lighting, and you can diffuse the flash's light with a couple layers of white TP (toilet paper) wrapped carefully around the flash and fastened down with a rubber band. (If you want to increase the diffusion effect, just use more layers, or fold the TP in half to effectively double the layers). The key is to adjust the TP layer till you get just the right amount of diffusion light on your subject.</p>

<p>7) Using a zoom lens & the minimum AF distance. - If you are positioned about 1 meter from the subject, you should be able to adjust your zoom lens, zoom it in, till the piece fills the VF nicely. But if you find the AF suddenly will not lock in on the focus point you picked, then that usually means you are closer than the minimum focus distance. In that case, you have to either back off on the zoom and try the AF again. OR you have to move the tripod back a little so that you are no longer closer than the minimum focus distance. This means there is a little T & E effort to finding just the right position for both the tripod and the zoom setting till you get both the frame-up you want and the AF locking on the point you want.</p>

<p>8) Position the camera & lens above and a bit to the side to minimize glare. Jewelry can tend to reflect a flash burst right back into the lens if you try to shoot it 'straight on'. But if you can use the tripod to hold the camera & lens say 1FT to the side and 1FT higher than the subject, then the flash burst illuminates the piece and much less glare is bounced back to the camera. Using diffusion layers, as described above, also will help minimize bright spots.</p>

<p>9) Using a normal-macro lens. Sigma makes a relatively inexpensive 28mm-90mm lens with a Macro switch. You set the lens to its tightest zoom, 90mm, then switch to Macro mode, and then you can position the camera and tripod very close to the piece, within a few inches. This perspective lets you get close-ups of fine details on nice jewlery. Again, the tripod, aperture, lighting are all important.</p>

<p>10) Use bounce lighting for an even softer light. If you decide that a direct frontal flash burst is providing just too much light, dont hesitate to bounce the light off the overhead ceiling. This will result in softer lighting spread evenly across the jewelry.</p>

<p>11) Pay attention to your WB (white balance). The rule of thumb with your camera's White Balance setting is to try and set it to match the type of lighting falling on your subject. For example, if you used only diffused Sunlight to illumine a piece of jewelry, then you would probably need to set the WB to its 'Cloudy' setting. (Cloudy since the lighting is diffused). But if you chose to use your Flash, then you should probably set the WB to the Flash setting. If the WB is not set correctly, then your colors will look wrong in the picture. You might even see an overall color cast across the whole picure or the whole set of pictures. That would require you to do clean up work in your picture editing software to correct the colors. Colors are pretty important for jewelry pictures, so always try to set the WB correctly. If you are not sure, you can set the WB to A (for Automatic), take a few sample pics, then look at them on the computer to see if A gives you acceptable results.</p>

<p>12) Try shooting in Aperture Preferred Auto mode. This will allow you to set the aperture and thereby govern both the amount of light let into the camera AND the amount of DOF (depth of field) which affects how much of the scene is in focus. I suggest using a medium aperture like f5.6 to start, and carefully check the results on the LCD Monitor. The camera will select an appropriate shutter speed. Even if it selects a shutter that would be considered 'slow', like 1/50th second, thats OK cause the subject is stationary AND you have the camera on the tripod.</p>

<p>Then if you decide you need more DOF, just switch to a smaller aperture (go to a higher f #). Or if you want less DOF for artistic effect, switch to a larger aperture (smaller f #). By carefully monitoring your results on the LCD Monitor, you get a pretty good idea what's going on with the image.</p>

<p>I hope you find these hints helpful regardless of the type of setup you choose. They're just some basic ideas I found I ran into the last time I took some jewelry shots.</p>

<p>AP</p>

[mike_hitchen]

<p>in reference to #2 in Alan's excellent post - you could buy a cable release to speed up the shooting time.</p>

<p>A few SLRs enable you to shoot 'tethered' - this means that the camera is linked to a computer via a USB cable and when you take a shot it appears (almost) instantly on the screen. This way you do not need to take out your memory card, go to the computer, look at the photo, go back to the shoot and change things around. Although you can use the camera LCD, this can giev a better preview of the image.</p>

[frank_dzambic]

<p>What you need is a light tent. They can be bought or made at home and are excellent not only for jewellry photography but other product photography as well. If you want to make one yourself (no reason not to) they can be made from cheap materials such as cardboard boxes or pvc tubing, and tissue paper or fabric. You can Google for tutorials on building your own.</p>