I've done a fair amount of jewelry and highly glazed pottery shooting
(shiny pottery can be as troublesome or more so than jewelry) but I'm
not good at it. By that I mean I can't just look at a piece and know
exactly how to light it and figuring out the lighting can be extremely
time consuming. I generally end up experimenting with light tents (both
commercial and cobbled together), flash and/or natural light with
reflectors. Window light and a reflector or two often works very well.
My favorite background surfaces are flat black formica, black plexiglass
and a first surface mirror (which you could get out of an old Polaroid).
I have also used various colors and patterns of ceramic tile. I like
brown earth tones with gold jewelry and bluish/gray with silver. I also
liked the rough stone in the Oly example below but I've never done
anything using more than two lights plus reflectors or shields to block
light. I have also used smooth surfaced colored construction paper. I
have tried cloth such as black velvet but I find that the texture or
weave of cloth is generally large enough that it overwhelms a small
jewelry piece. The same is true of rough surface paper.
When using dark backgrounds be sure to thoroughly dust the surfaces with
a Swiffer duster just before you shoot. Your wonderful macro shots will
be sure to show every fleck of dust.
Finally, there is PhotoShop. It is often times much faster to just
patch a small, overly bright spot with the clone tool than to spend
another hour or two or three trying to get the lights just right to get
rid of it. You'll also need it to clean up specs of dust that you
thought you got but didn't.
Chuck Norcutt
NSURIT@xxxxxxx wrote:
> Thank you, Dan. Any other ideas floating around out there? Bill Barber
>
>
> In a message dated 2/11/2008 11:40:08 P.M. Central Standard Time,
> danmitchell@xxxxxxxx writes:
>
> NSURIT@xxxxxxx wrote:
>> Does anyone have experience with photographing diamond (and other
> precious
>> stones) jewelry for advertising/websites?
>
> Olympus themselves have advice on that:
>
> http://olympusdigitalschool.com/e-system_cameras/e-1/E-1_A_Different_View_On_J
> ewelry_Photography/index.html
>
> http://olympusdigitalschool.com/e-system_cameras/e-1/E-1_Sapphire_Set_in_the_L
> iteRoom/index.html
>
> -- dan
>
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