Photo of Jewelry with Digital Camera, best procedure?

Question

I have tried over and over to get a good photo of Jewelry with my HP Digital Camera. I try different lights, flash or no flash, close or far, net around item, and still no luck. Can it be done with a simple camera or do you need special equipment?
I have a little white tent got at Christmas but it is too hard to use, cumbersome?
Any ideas?

Answer 1

You need two side lights thru white diffuse material. Then, and here's the trick, use one light that is directly on the jewel.

You have to position this light to give the best result.

And use a complimentary velvet or satin background. Very important, don't use a flash, and do a correct 'White Balance'.

See the link for pictures of what I'm talking about.

Answer 2

If you don't have any special equipment, and only have what's in the house, then here's an idea for you.

Get some black velvet and lay it on a flat board. Take this outside into the sun, and set it up where the sun is shining directly onto it. Put the piece of jewelry onto the black velvet card.

Get someone to hold a piece of white card up and tilt it so the sun is reflected onto the dark, shadow side of the jewelry.

Set your digital camera to Macro and get right in close to it, making sure your shadow doesn't block out the sun.

Snap away, and keep checking how they're coming out. If its not too good, move the card with the jewelry and the person holding the card around until you get the right photo.

And, make sure you hold the camera really, really steady, otherwise the photo will be a bit blurry.

Answer 3

If you are not going to go with a DSLR, almost any point and shoot with a macro mode will serve you well, so try one more technique with your HP. The thing is, I feel that you need to use the flash to force the aperture to close while still having enough light for an exposure. Many here will tell you different, but follow this advice and see what you think.

Use your macro setting and experiment. Let's say you have a point and shoot camera with macro and a flash on the camera. You might have to go to a manual mode to do this, but...

Put your item on a nice background surface. I like to just put it in a ring box or on some velour. Zoom out at least half-way so that you will be working about a foot away from the ring. Be sure that you get focus confirmation. Shoot a picture USING flash. Check the LCD for the result. If you have overexposed the item, use the EV adjustment to reduce the exposure. For small items, I often find that I need to reduce the exposure by about 1.0 EV. (That's -1.0 EV.) It is better to have the item properly exposed and the background underexposed, so just worry about the jewelry for now. Using a deliberate underexposure will cure the "too shiny" appearance of the stones and metal.

If you know how, you can use either full manual exposure or just Aperture Priority and choose a smaller aperture (larger number) to make the ring show up in better focus.

If you have a DSLR, post your question again stating the kind of camera that you have and the lens that you are using and we will give more details.

If you are doing any image processing at all, such with Photoshop or it's cousins, you can crop the image to 800 pixels by 800 pixels and use Supersize images on eBay. I always use the Picture Pack when I am selling anything of any value.

Check out http://www.members.aol.com/swf08302/heartring.jpg which I did a while ago using a Nikon Coolpix 5400 exactly as described above. I do NOT think this is acceptable, but we decided not to sell the ring anyhow, so I didn't bother to do a better job. It's still better than some I've seen. I don't keep old photos of sold items around, so I don't have much to show you, but at least you know that it's possible to get an acceptable result even without spending huge dollars on your equipment.

The key things to remember are:
-Macro setting
-Zoom out to get about a foot away from your subject
-Use flash
-Try different EV settings and expect that you will end up with a negative EV setting, such as -1.0 EV.

Here are a couple of coin photos done exactly as described:

http://www1.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=57759389/PictureID=2801041875/a=75953750_75953750/t_=75953750
http://www1.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=57759389/PictureID=2801041874/a=75953750_75953750/t_=75953750

Here are a couple more auction photos done as described, using a 60 mm macro lens on a DSLR:

800 x 800 http://www.members.aol.com/swf08302/yorkie01.jpg
800 x 800 http://www.members.aol.com/swf08302/montblanc05.jpg

Answer 4

Alan M. gave you great answers. If, however, you're feeling especialy non-technical, there's one easy way to get a good - if not great - photo almost every time:

Shoot outside, on a slightly overcast, NOT sunny day. Pick an area out in the open... not under a tree or anything. Set up your background materials. You want non-shiny fabrics, like velvet (have a lint roller handy), or ulrasuede. NO patterns, please!

Another good alternative is a piece of textured glass. You can etch the back with a product called "Etch-All" that will make it look like Lalique frosted crystal----no glare!

if you're not good at drilling glass, there's a product called "museum putty" or "museum wax" that will temporaily hold anything to a glass surface if you decide to go that route. (You'll have to tilt it a bit get things to lay right)

Set up your shot - and I highly recommend no more than one, or two items at the most per shot - set your camera on full automatic, set your white balance if you have it, go to macro, again if you have it, and take some sample shots. If you have any unwanted shadows, the old white foamcore to bounce light should do the trick. This will also cure most instances of glare of "starring", although if it really is overcast, this is unlikely.

And remember, shoot all you want..... you're not using up film, and you can always erase! Practice makes, if not perfect, then at least, much better!!!!!

Answer 5

use flourescent light. there are light boxes that you can get that are just for jewelry. Make sure that you use the macro setting on your camera within the distance that it recommends. If you use the largest megapixel size then you will be able to get the best picture detail. If you can use a tripod and a timer to eliminate any movement when you take the picture.

Answer 6

I surely have a digicam and love all the best factors and image modifying that became blanketed interior the digicam. the images are good, after I placed them complete-demonstrate length they are very sparkling and to me it quite is nice.