Opinions vary on what's desirable when photographing jewelry. Some believe that there should be absolutely no reflections from the surroundings. This may be desirable for some jewelry but in my opinion, it leaves smooth, shiny metallic objects looking flat and uninteresting. I'll show several different ways to photograph one particular piece. From what I've seen on eBay, more than a few sellers need to view this page. :)
If you try this and believe that you want to persue jewelry photography, you can look to more professional tents and enclosures but this will allow you to try something new for just a few dollars. If nothing else, it will allow you to determine if the equipment you have is up to the task. Here I used my Canon S3 and a Raynox DCR-250 close-up lens.
If you've found this site from the home page (Basic Macro Photography), you've seen the white box enclosure I used. This adds to that enclosure. You've also seen the bowl type diffuser. This uses the same bowls as a shooting stage and diffuser. I've suspended the bowls to allow light to enter the bottom of the bowl. This further reduces the shadows. The bottom bowl is attached to string (with clear packing tape) that is attached to the side of the enclosure. The tape on top of the upper bowl serves as a handle. A handle made of clear tape may have been better because it wouldn't block any light but I didn't see any shadows with the gray tape.
As you'll see in the next few examples, different conditions/techniques result in varying color balance and brightness. If you capture a good quality image (in focus, no blown highlights and otherwise good exposure), you can repair minor problems in Photoshop or the GIMP.
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Here, you can see an image taken with no flash and with as few reflections as I could get. I cut a small hole in a sheet of paper and shot through the hole so there would be no reflection from the camera. Technically, it's not a bad photo. It's in focus and has relatively good exposure, contrast and saturation but it's not appealing. If you're taking photos for insurance purposes, this may be OK. If you're competing with other sellers, this won't get the job done.
This was taken with no flash and custom white balance to compensate for the ambient fluorescent lighting.
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This image was taken as above but here I used the flash. I had no diffuser on the camera but the flash fired through the piece of paper so it was diffused before it hit the bowls where it was further diffused. As you can see, the flash helps bring out the brilliance of the stones but with virtually no reflections on the gold, the band looks uninteresting.
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This was taken with the same setup as the previous image but I cut the top off of the paper so the flash could fire directly on the bowl. It's a bit overexposed. This could have been prevented with an additional diffuser or by blocking part of the light. I could have set the flash power lower but on this camera, there are only 3 choices for flash output when using the custom setting on the camera and the next lower would have been too dark.
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Here, I didn't shoot from behind a piece of paper so the camera's dark reflection can be seen in some areas of the ring. No flash was used here.
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As I mentioned before, some people want to prevent any reflections in the item being photographed. For items like this ring, reflections make the image better (in my opinion). If you look at the top edges of the gold band, you can see several dark reflections. These appear on all upper faces of the gold. This gives the band more dimension than when there were no reflections. This is a photo of the modified set.
In my opinion, this is a good base image with which to work. I'll show you a few different ways to make it a bit more interesting using the GIMP.
In this photo, a styrofoam cup was used as a diffuser on the flash.
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In the base image, the bowl was a bit too green (influence from ambient fluorescent lighting). I selected the background using the fuzzy select tool (and cleaning up with the lasso tool). Then the selected area was desaturated (color removed). In my opinion, this would be where I'd stop but it's probably not eye-catching enough to snag impulse buyers.
Some people don't want any background or want a pure white background. While I had the background selected, I could have easily increased the brightness and saturation until the background was pure white. The photo could then have been dropped into any white web page with no apparent border or background.
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When using the select tool, you have the option to select the inverse. Using that option, everything but the background (the ring) was selected. I then used the levels tool to increase the contrast slightly. This made the band a bit richer looking.
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Since the red stone looked a bit dark, I decided to apply the levels tool to it. I selected the stone using the free select (lasso) tool.
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I then selected each of the CZ stones and added a bit more contrast and brightness to them.
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If you don't have a close-up lens, you can still take passable photos. This photo was taken with no close-up lens. The stage was simply a piece of white paper. There are harsh shadows and reflections but if that's not a concern, it may be all you need.
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This photo was taken as the one above but I placed a reflective surround/partial enclosure (similar to this) over it.
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This photo was taken on the light table shown on this page. There was no reflector above the table. These photos (without the close-up lenses) aren't too bad. The biggest problem is the size of the image. What's shown here is the full size image of the ring. The photos with the close-up lens are significantly larger and can therefore show much more detail. For this and the two previous images, I was about 6 feet from the ring. The flash was fired at full power. This is a full size crop of the ring with the close-up lens.
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The following two photos are a bit different in that they were taken with the ring standing vertically. The left image is as it came from the camera. On the right, I used the curves tool in the GIMP to increase the overall contrast a bit. The ring is being held up by holding wax. It's available on eBay. When they suggest that you only need a tiny piece to hold the ring, they mean it. It holds better on smooth, hard surfaces. If applied to paper (or similar material), it may damage the surface when removing it. This is a photo of the setup. I used a styrofoam cup diffuser on the flash.
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In the previous images, I had a tough time trying to get rid of the white glare on the flats of the stone. To prevent this, I needed something that would help promote light distribution but only from the sides. Since the top of the stone didn't have any reflections from the white reflective surface, the stone doesn't look washed out (on the face of the red stone). The brilliance of the stone in the previous images is better but that's almost entirely due to angle of the camera with respect to the stone. This is a photo of the setup. I used a styrofoam bowl diffuser on the flash (flat, not around the adapter). The image on the right (below) is the same but I didn't use the bowl around the ring. The second row shows the same images after using the curves tool in the GIMP.
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This is essentially the same setup as above but I flipped the bowl to see the difference in the lighting. It seemed to be better this way. The left image is without modification. I used the curves tool in GIMP on the right image. This is a photo of the setup.
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I know a lot of people will scoff at the idea of using styrofoam cups and bowls for photography but it's not important what you use. Only the results are important. Using the methods here, you can learn what works best for you and it won't cost more than a couple of bucks. For those who are good photographers but don't have a big budget, they will be able to do quite well using lighting methods similar to these. If you decide that you want to get more serious about jewelry photography, you may want to look into commercially available light tents and boxes.
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A note about the ring. It's an inexpensive piece of jewelry I purchased just for this page. It cost less than $30US including shipping. You're likely to have better results with high quality jewelry.
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