Photographing Jewellery

blaze_away

blaze_away

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Frank Wilson
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Hi all, I need some help and advice please.

My daughter has started to make jewellery and she wants me to produce some high class pictures of the pieces she's working on.

What she wants is stuff like this guy produces, which are simple stunning.

http://www.hartleystudios.com/

Anyone got any ideas its done ?
 
photoshop and strings or wire.

mostly photoshop

sorry if it doesnt help much, but there quite a few photos and my experience is limited. i would guess there is only one light source, and the ones with rings lying down are done on a glass with white paper underneath.
 
It isn't difficult to achieve this level of quality, it just takes knowledge, care and suitable equipment.
My guess is that they're shot on medium format digital, but a DSLR can produce perfectly adequate results with the right lens.
The next consideration is the subject - detailed shots need to be of perfect subjects, otherwise the shots will show every fault. And absolute cleanliness is essential.
The next consideration is the lighting, which is very harsh, and which brings out the sparkle. This is normally achieved with very small light sources, and with an overall fill to mitigate the effect. The standard advice on forums seems to be to use a light tent, but this produces the opposite effect to what you want.

And finally, there is A LOT of post production computer work involved in these shots
 
Garry Edwards said:
It isn't difficult to achieve this level of quality, it just takes knowledge, care and suitable equipment.
My guess is that they're shot on medium format digital, but a DSLR can produce perfectly adequate results with the right lens.
The next consideration is the subject - detailed shots need to be of perfect subjects, otherwise the shots will show every fault. And absolute cleanliness is essential.
The next consideration is the lighting, which is very harsh, and which brings out the sparkle. This is normally achieved with very small light sources, and with an overall fill to mitigate the effect. The standard advice on forums seems to be to use a light tent, but this produces the opposite effect to what you want.

And finally, there is A LOT of post production computer work involved in these shots
Click to expand...

Great advice Gary, when you say 'small light sources' any thoughts on how I would create those, I've got a couple of studio lights and SB800 flash guns.

Cheers
Frank
 
blaze_away said:
Great advice Gary, when you say 'small light sources' any thoughts on how I would create those, I've got a couple of studio lights and SB800 flash guns.

Cheers
Frank
Click to expand...
There are a lot of different ways of doing this. One of the cheapest is to use Cinefoil (aka blackwrap) which is like a thick baking foil coated black. Cut a hole (or whatever shape you want) in it and stick it over the light. If it's fitted to a hotshoe flash the shape will be soft edged, if it's on a studio flash head it will be further from the light and so will be harder edged. make the light harder or softer by moving it further or closer. There are other, more specialised tools like focussing spotlights or fibre optics, but they just make things easier, not better.
 
Garry has hit the nail on the head. These are superb jewelry shots and to be honest it may be difficult to replicate what he has done with a simple home set up.

The light tent is going to be the easiest way to get good overall illumination. Remember with jewelry it can act like a mirror and reflects light, or lack of it, hence a tent is a good idea. You may want to also place a reflector around your lens. A simple piece of stiff paper with a hole cut in it for the lens to poke through should be adequate.

Try to use contrasting backgrounds, to bring out the jewelry. If you have some black perspex or similar that may give a dramatic appearance.

There is a fair bit of PP work here but I would suggest you keep that to a minimum at the moment. You really just want to produce good quality results.

I don't know how big the items of jewelry are that you have, however if you can, and you have a camera that lets you do it, try shooting tethered. ( many Canon's will let you do this) This enables you to take the picture then view the image, on a laptop of computer screen. This enables you to see the result much bigger than the back of the camera. See something not quite right then you can re shoot straight away. Plus the artistic director ( your daughter ) can see the results straight away and tell you how clever you are;)
 
I posted some feedback in a similar thread last week

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=90438

Best advice I can give is to fill your memory card with every shoot and experiment as much as you can along the way.

It is not easy at all - no harm in aiming high but the link you posted contains some of the best examples I've seen in this game. Personally I have no idea how I could replicate that level of quality.
 
Thanks folks for the great advice....

OK, so being realistic, to get similar quality shots isn't going to be easy, I like a challenge, I'll be having a go next week so lets see how good I can get with it.

I'll post some images when I've got these bits and pieces together.
 
The example shots are of a good pro standard but well within the reach of any pro commercial photographer. The only real barrier to getting that kind of quality at home is lack of knowledge and lack of skill, so it will take a while and a fair bit of experimentation - but just filling the memory card won't do it. What's needed here is careful preparation and careful thought as well as an understanding of how light works.

Eventually, you'll need to improve the shots on computer too - but try to get the shots as near perfect in camera as you can, the computer should be used to improve good shots, not to rescue bad ones.
 
Garry Edwards said:
The example shots are of a good pro standard but well within the reach of any pro commercial photographer. The only real barrier to getting that kind of quality at home is lack of knowledge and lack of skill, so it will take a while and a fair bit of experimentation - but just filling the memory card won't do it. What's needed here is careful preparation and careful thought as well as an understanding of how light works.
Eventually, you'll need to improve the shots on computer too - but try to get the shots as near perfect in camera as you can, the computer should be used to improve good shots, not to rescue bad ones.
Click to expand...

This is not as easy as many above may think it is. Gary is right. You need to understand light and placement of your lights is essential.

THat said there are things on the market that will allow you to achieve high quality results.

http://www.mkdigitaldirect.com/products/lighting-systems/mk-gem-ebox.html

It may be expensive but a friend of mine who makes her own is looking at this and is impressed with the images she's seen from it so far.

I've tried it. I used a small lightbox available in the UK from Maplin £9.99 and used a couple of elinchrom BX400 strobes. It was hard getting the sparkle.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimdavies/sets/72157603090273340/

I think this lightbox has the makings of a great way to cheaply get the results you need.

Photoshop may help with a little but getting those images close to prefection in the camera is of paramunt importance.
 
THat said there are things on the market that will allow you to achieve high quality results.

http://www.mkdigitaldirect.com/produ...-gem-ebox.html

It may be expensive but a friend of mine who makes her own is looking at this and is impressed with the images she's seen from it so far.

I've tried it. I used a small lightbox available in the UK from Maplin £9.99 and used a couple of elinchrom BX400 strobes. It was hard getting the sparkle.
Click to expand...

I haven't tried this expensive toy and I doubt whether many pros have. Basically it's a light tent with a few little extras designed to de-skill the operation and produce acceptable results with a minimum of effort.

But, as I said earlier, you don't need a light tent, just an understanding of light, care, knowledge, patience and some small light sources. Getting 'sparkle' isn't difficult, the difficulty is in controlling it, which is why beginners tend to go for light tents and professionals avoid them like the plague!
 
Garry Edwards said:
I haven't tried this expensive toy and I doubt whether many pros have. Basically it's a light tent with a few little extras designed to de-skill the operation and produce acceptable results with a minimum of effort.

But, as I said earlier, you don't need a light tent, just an understanding of light, care, knowledge, patience and some small light sources. Getting 'sparkle' isn't difficult, the difficulty is in controlling it, which is why beginners tend to go for light tents and professionals avoid them like the plague!
Click to expand...

Thanks again everyone for valuable insight, as Garrysuggests, I am going to try the pro route and control the light, ie not using a tent, I have a number of ideas I'm going to try as well, one of which is wear black clothes and put up black background behind me to stop reflection of me and my gear in the subjects.

Should be all ready for wednesday next week.

thanks agian to you all.
 
I respectfully disagree with the opinion that specular lighting is involved in jewelry photography. In the images shown on the website, a broad light source is used. You can see it in the shanks of most of the rings.

Whenever you have an expanse of shiny, mirror-like material, it will reflect the environment around it. If you look at the pieces, you will see reflectors, light sources, and the "seams" in the environment which show up as dark spots. (Sometimes long, black gobos are strategically placed on the set to reflect a dark line so as to define the edge of an article of jewelry.

I've seen specular lighting used on jewelry, and it usually shows hotspots everywhere. This effect can be controlled, and it is often employed in conjunction with a starburst filter.

The diamonds require special attention. If you light it from the camera position, it will turn black. Lit from the side with a broad light source, the diamond reveals the facets as well as the cut (something which is critical to showing the beauty of the diamond-- especially if it possesses any subtle color).

Jewelry photographers usually use a light tent or a white Plexiglas sphere to create a seamless environment, though, excellent results may be obtained with a medium-sized softbox and sets of white and/or silver reflectors.

The images in the website have two things going for them: skilled photography, excellent Photoshop work and (this is what makes it so easy) new jewelry. All of my jewelry work has been of antique and estate (used) jewelry, so there are tiny scratches galore. When advertised with a price, I cannot and do not use more than rudimentary photoshop application: adjusting brightness and contrast and dropping out the background. Anything more than that is frowned upon in my neck of the woods. On the website provided by the OP, the photographer and the designer are working with fine (new) jewelry, so pretty much anything goes. It's pretty much considered flawless anyway, so removing an errant fingerprint (a HUGE problem in this kind of work) or even a small nick isn't considered unethical. Fooling with a specific diamond which has a price attached to it is considered unethical. (I don't think that there are any laws against it because most people who purchase diamonds at retail usually buy them in person).

Web photography doesn't require a whole lot of pixel power. Six mp will do the job for website work, but a greater number of megapixels gives everyone a lot of leeway when it comes to postprocessing. More pixels= more information=more control.

I still shoot with a 4x5 film camera for magazine work. I don't even fool with scanning the transparency because the publisher has access to scanning equipment that I can only dream of owning.
 
This is turning into an interesting discussion. We're getting some knowledgable input...

'Bloo Dog' has made some good points. I agree that a broad light source has been used for fill in some of the example shots (together with specular lighting) and that it has been used as the only light source in others.

The fact of the matter is, light is just a tool (OK it's by far the most important tool) and different jobs need different tools. If the only tool you have is a hammer, eveything has to be treated as a nail. In photography, we need to use a range of tools to overcome a range of problems and the main problems with lighting jewellery are to produce a (reasonably) accurate representation of the product but to make it look as good as we can - I didn't say that we should make it look better than it is, but that's a given when selling new products, the trick is to make the customer want to buy it but not to be disappointed when they actually get it - and making it look as good as we can normally but not always means using small specular light soures to make it jump off the page.

I'm glad that Bloo Dog mentioned the importance of cleanliness - as I mentioned earlier, this is vital with jewellery (and most other products) but not always. I remember photographing a dog wearing a dog car safety harness once. The dog was dropping hair everywhere and I didn't bother to retouch it out. The final shot was used in a poster and people were drawn to it because they were actually trying to pick up the hairs!

Most product photography is done by experts (OK, there are plenty of websites with terrible snapshots that masquerade as product shots) and the job of an expert is to make the shot look as if there has been no manipulation, whether carried out by lighting, camera movements or on the computer. With practice, a beginner can become reasonably expert in a very specialised field. What I'm saying here is that the knowledge has to be fairly deep but not very broad to produce good jewellery shots and the OP should be able to achieve good results with practice, even though learning how to photograph jewellery well won't equip him to photography furniture, machinery or food
 
EOS_JD said:
http://www.mkdigitaldirect.com/products/lighting-systems/mk-gem-ebox.html

It may be expensive but a friend of mine who makes her own is looking at this and is impressed with the images she's seen from it so far.

I've tried it. I used a small lightbox available in the UK from Maplin £9.99 and used a couple of elinchrom BX400 strobes. It was hard getting the sparkle.
Click to expand...

I've seen these light boxes. Their intended market is the jewelry store and the unskilled photographer/ sales clerk. While such setups will provide shadowless lighting, it severely restricts camera angle. They also employ fluorescent lighting which can cause color balance problems as well as force the photographer to use wide apertures which greatly reduce the depth of field.

When lighting diamonds in a light tent or in a Plexiglas sphere, you can get sparkle from small clear cut stones by lighting them obliquely and by putting the light source closer to the light tent or to the sphere. That causes the stone to flare, thus giving the stone more life. On larger stones where it is desirable to show the cut (e.g., brilliant cut which has 58 facets), you have to strike a balance between lighting the interior of the diamond and creating flare on the surface of the diamond AND on the shank of the ring or whatever the jewel setting may be. It's tricky.

Unless you're shooting with a large format camera, you need little more than one or two slaved Vivitar 285s, a set of reflectors and a large, cheap plastic mixing bowl. If anyone's interested, I'll be happy to share my tabletop technology for 35mm and DSLR.
 
Gary,

Sometimes your best friend is a vacuum cleaner, or a polishing cloth, or a pair of cotton gloves. I once shot a HUGE man's diamond ring with a 10 ct diamond in it. Everything went so well: I got it to stand up with minimal wax under the shank. I had total control over the environment. The ring had been buffed and steam cleaned.

The lighting was perfect.

And i got a PERFECT shot of a 10 carat man's diamond ring. The diamond was champagne colored, and the setting was 18ct gold. I captured everything about that ring.

INCLUDING MY HUGE THUMB PRINT ON THE SHANK AND THE DIAMOND.

I shot it on 4x5, so I had to reshoot it two days later. I should have shot a polaroid, but I was so full of hubris.

I agree that jewelry requires a narrow set of skills, largely because of the size of the objects and the nature of the objects. It is also an area in which one can develop a distinctive style with relatively few tools. I think, though, that anyone who masters even some of the techniques of jewelry photography (I rank myself about a 7 out of 10) will become quite concerned with the details so that it'll make him a better photographer in other areas. After all, in pro photography, the devil is in the details.
 
Bloo Dog & Garry

I'm enjoying this discussion, your thoughts, ideas and experience are quite staggering I'm really looking forward to getting to try some of these things out and see what I get.
Bloo Dog, you mention wax as a support, is that just candle wax melted and the stick the ring into it then removing excess so its not visible or some other technique you've got ?

Chers guys
 
I use clear laminating wax. It's used for laminating plastic covers to artwork. You can buy it at any good art store. I've seen it marketed as "Sticky Stuff" in photography supply stores.

It is very useful stuff. The trick to using it is using just enough to hold the piece in place. Once the piece is in place, I usually have to take a razor blade and cut away whatever shows . It does clean easily-- even on paper.

Since it has such a low melting point, it is affected by the modeling lights on studio lights. On large sets and photos requiring really high resolution, I use a 4x5 camera, so that's one of the problems with the wax. I either have to work quickly or work without modeling lights while I'm doing the setup. I don't know how many times I've gotten a ring set at just the right angle when another piece on the set fell over and had to be reset! When it's a bit warm inside, I've had to resort to turning every light off and proceed with a handheld flashlight!

If there's an interest in very small product tabletop photography, I'll be happy to show what I do and show the very simple and inexpensive tools which can be used for small sets of 1-3 rings and a few bracelets. There are several ways of getting different effects. Most of my work requires high key lighting. It's all a matter of environmental control.
 
Bloo Dog said:
I use clear laminating wax. It's used for laminating plastic covers to artwork. You can buy it at any good art store. I've seen it marketed as "Sticky Stuff" in photography supply stores.

It is very useful stuff. The trick to using it is using just enough to hold the piece in place. Once the piece is in place, I usually have to take a razor blade and cut away whatever shows . It does clean easily-- even on paper.

Since it has such a low melting point, it is affected by the modeling lights on studio lights. On large sets and photos requiring really high resolution, I use a 4x5 camera, so that's one of the problems with the wax. I either have to work quickly or work without modeling lights while I'm doing the setup. I don't know how many times I've gotten a ring set at just the right angle when another piece on the set fell over and had to be reset! When it's a bit warm inside, I've had to resort to turning every light off and proceed with a handheld flashlight!

If there's an interest in very small product tabletop photography, I'll be happy to show what I do and show the very simple and inexpensive tools which can be used for small sets of 1-3 rings and a few bracelets. There are several ways of getting different effects. Most of my work requires high key lighting. It's all a matter of environmental control.
Click to expand...

Hi Bloo Dog:
I would be very interested in seeing/knowing more about how you do it.
 
Will do. I'll have to figure out where to place the thread. I'm new here.

Keep in mind: there are several ways to photograph jewelry; none is better than the other, but certain media have certain requirements. For multimedia use (e.g., internet, web press, full color glossy, etc.) of one image, I find high key to be the most versatile.
 
Bloo Dog said:
Will do. I'll have to figure out where to place the thread. I'm new here.

Keep in mind: there are several ways to photograph jewelry; none is better than the other, but certain media have certain requirements. For multimedia use (e.g., internet, web press, full color glossy, etc.) of one image, I find high key to be the most versatile.
Click to expand...

If you scroll down you'll see that there's a 'Tutorials' section.

BTW, to a lot of people on this forum 'high key' means an overexposed white background and degraded edge detail:'(
 
Garry Edwards said:
BTW, to a lot of people on this forum 'high key' means an overexposed white background and degraded edge detail:'(
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Actually, "high key" is a specific term which applies to an image consisting of predominantly light tones. Check out the books "Light, Science, and Magic" (I forget the name of the authors-- I keep giving the book away) or "Studio Photography" by Michael Freeman.

What you describe is one of the hazards of an overlit background.
 
Bloo Dog said:
Actually, "high key" is a specific term which applies to an image consisting of predominantly light tones. Check out the books "Light, Science, and Magic" (I forget the name of the authors-- I keep giving the book away) or "Studio Photography" by Michael Freeman.

What you describe is one of the hazards of an overlit background.
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Actually I do know that....;)
Unfortuately a lot of people seem to think it means something else:'(
 
BTW: I haven't forgotten about the tutorial. I am, in fact, working on it. I had to procure some jewelry first. Everything so far is stuff destined for the scrap heap to be melted down for gold when the price goes back up, so you won't see primo merchandise except for one piece that I shot last night for an ad. The rest is ingot, class rings, an 18k bracelet. It isn't cheap bling, but it isn't fine jewelry either.
 
Bloo Dog said:
BTW: I haven't forgotten about the tutorial. I am, in fact, working on it. I had to procure some jewelry first. Everything so far is stuff destined for the scrap heap to be melted down for gold when the price goes back up, so you won't see primo merchandise except for one piece that I shot last night for an ad. The rest is ingot, class rings, an 18k bracelet. It isn't cheap bling, but it isn't fine jewelry either.
Click to expand...

thanks bloo dog, still looking forward to your thoughts, I tried doing some photos of a few bits and pieces from home, by heck its difficult, haven't produced anything worth posting
 
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