How to take jewellery photographs?

Question

Need hints to take beautiful pictures of jewellery items such as rings, bracelets, earrings, etc... I have a Fujifilm S5500 digital camera with 4MP and 10x optical zoom. I also have a tripod. I've tried my own way to take jewellery photos but the problem i have is the shadows behind the items. I can retouch the photos in photoshop but i wanna get a perfect result with camera first. Do I need EzCube or something similar? Please suggest.

Answer 1

Light tents are ideal when shooting highly reflective items, but you don't have to buy one. In fact everytime I used one, it has been something I have made. Here is an example of how to make a quick light tent using tissue paper. http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/19002.html

Answer 2

Obviously, a light tent is the answer for diffuse lighting, but here's my stock answer for eBay photos of jewelry. Maybe you will find something helpful in here.

For objects photographed from a distance of 3-4 feet, absolutely any digital camera and any "digital photographer" can get a suitable image. Don't forget that the largest picture eBay will display (unless you are hosting your own images) is 800 x 800 pixels or less than 1 megapixel. For jewelry or other small items, you have to learn macro technique. You can also do this with almost any digital camera, but here's an article that I wrote about jewelry in specific. I am sure that you will find it helpful.

The best way to take photos of jewelry for a web site is with a digital SLR and a macro lens. If you are not going to go with a DSLR, almost any point and shoot with a macro mode will serve you well. 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.

I happen to have some photos from old auctions on an FTP site. I think that these were all taken with a 3 MP Nikon Coolpix 885.

http://members.aol.com/swf08302/carvina.jpg
http://members.aol.com/swf08302/skullfront.jpg
http://members.aol.com/swf08302/konkontu.jpg
(The patch is about 4 inches long.)

Here are a couple of coin photos done exactly as described, but using a D200:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/1190290008/

I did these with my Nikon Coolpix 4600, just to show you what a really inexpensive camera can do. It's a 4 MP camera that I paid about $150 for a couple of years ago.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/577501964/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/577501976/

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.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/1296244675/ (light box)
800 x 800 http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/1296276707/ (light box)
800 x 800 http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04/412244168/ (light box)
800 x 800 http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04/412244164/

I finally posted that auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:11&item=200126973404

If you are interested in a full description of an SLR set-up, post a new question and ask specifically for that information. I'm gathering from the nature of your question that you might be in the point and shoot market.

Answer 3

A "light tent" is recommended.

Search on ebay or amazon for a copy of "Adventures In Closeup Photography" by Lief Ericksenn & Els Sincebaugh. It was written back when film was all there was but the principles remain the same.