How to photograph an entire ring? (Jewelry Photography)?

Question

Take a look at these websites, I'm trying to achieve the same effect. I shot some rings over the weekend but I could not figure out how to stand them up at this angle without revealing what I was propping it up with.

http://www.iwmarks.com/

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00H6ac

http://engagementrings.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Pave_Diamond_Ring_Settings

Answer 1

Read the description under this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/412244168/

and this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/1296244675/

and maybe this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/1296276707/

These are just sitting on top of a light box. After you take the picture, you can twist it and turn it anyway you need to in Photoshop.

If anyone else answers, I'll learn something myself. We have some pros who are good at this, so stay tuned.

Answer 2

My turn to play how did they light it. Here are my best guesses.

#1
Going for the group shot, my first impression is that this is a view camera shot. I has nothing to do with the quality per se, but the eveness of the depth of field. Given the angle of the shot and the placement of the rings, I certainly don't know how to get that kind of DOF without a view camera.

The ring to the right just behind the front ring is really there. You can pick up the reflection of the other ring on the interior. The ring that seems to be lying on the main front ring probably is and the one in back would seem to be there as well. The shadows are what I would expect to see, but they have been photoshopped very slightly, at least as far as the back ring on the right goes. It is just a hint and very welll done.

These are very light items so I would probably use a tacky putty. I have three types, one pure white, one grey and one sorta black. For this lighting, where the white is pretty well blown out, a white putty would just dissappear. I just did a shot for a question that I asked where that is exactly what I did. Used a white bounce that was in the field of view, but was overexposed and dissappeared in the picture. It works.

I am thinking either a large softbox overhead, or a light tent could achieve this type of lighting, but it is hard to tell from the reflections. I would expect to see overhead lighting in the reflections of the inner rings with a softbox, but I don't. A light tent could create something like I see if it was lit from from the sides and the top of the tent wasn't lit. That may give a darker area overhead, which would be something like the reflections I am seeing. But there are other reflections that say something else.

I am pretty sure, because these rings are so highly polished, that there are perhaps dark gray reflecting surfaces (or something along those lines) nearby to be reflected in the finish. You don't photography highly reflective metal objects, you photograph what is reflected in them.

#2
Black plexiglass, I think the Brit's call it Perspex. I would put black velvet all around it to create a dead black environment (everything will be reflected in the plastic, it's a mirror). A large softbox would take care of the light.

#3
This could simply be shot in a light tent and the ring held with tacky putty. The shadows are pretty much what you would expect from a photoshop job. Natural shadows don't fall off like that. Commercial retouching 101.

Anyway, them's my guesses.

There are several websites that cover jewelry photography and go into detail about it. I have seen them, but since I don't shoot jewelry, I didn't note their URL's.

Like Sam, I anticipate someone coming along who DOES shoot jewelry to educate us all.

Vance

Answer 3

Shot one:

The jewelry is stood up with jewelers wax, and probably a very small white prop (about toothpic sized) for the fronts of the two top rings, that was subsequently photo-shopped out. That's the fastest way to do that. The trick is making the prop small with consistent edges... its no big thing to clone it out. (or airbrush it out if you're shooting film. Jewelry photography has a long history of "post-processing" that long predates photoshop).

The lighting is run-of-the-mill light box with a "sparkler" throwing some hard light from the front (visible in the single bright reflection at the back of the rings.

FWIW to poster above... that DOF can be done without a view camera.... feel free to PM me about it... its a bit beyond the scope here.

EDIT: Got the second shot. The easiest way to get this is a black polished ceramic tile, a black poster-board or velvet behind to make sure its a black reflection, and light-box around the rest. nothing special about the light....

The third shot is probably stood straight up (or almost) with wax, but the camera angle makes it look more tilted. Again, light-box, but this time theres a slightly harder backlight that gives a bit more definition to the shadow. As another poster noted, there was a bit of PSing done to get the whites white, which always affects the shadows a bit.

Answer 4

Either there was some kind of adhesive used, or whatever was used to prop them up was edited out in post (photoshop). It wouldn't be too difficult to duplicat, given the size and weight, you wouldn't need a very strong adhesive. Perhaps you could use either plain old elmer's glue, or a glue stick. For more flexibility, you could use some sort of putty, then edit it out after.

After reading this, I realize that it sounds pretty stupid, so I'm with Dr. Sam. Maybe a professional jewelry photog can correct me.

Answer 5

looks to me like all these rings were photographed lying down and then they were rotated in photoshop where the images were set to different raster layers and overlaid upon each other to save as a merged image.

If you have a photo imaging program, I'd suggest you google for ways to use raster layers. Gimp is a free photo tool available online for free.

Answer 6

I'm guessing you might be able to photo shop the props out?

Answer 7

Here is a Great Website with lots of details regarding what you are asking. I think it should answer all your questions.

http://www.tabletopstudio.com/documents/jewelry_photography.htm