shooting jewelry, how to light?

AshleyC

AshleyC

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Im trying to take a photo of a diamond ring. At the moment im just using a bright white LED torch. To my eyes i can see all the sparkles in the diamonds, but they just dont come through on the photograph. Im shooting in the same eye line as how im looking at it, it might be a degree or 2 out but still, i would of thought you would see all the colour sparkles come through. What do i need to do?
 
You probably need to reduce the exposure... I'm guessing that your exposure is washing things out to a more equal higher brightness. Most "sparkle" from a diamond comes from light passing thru it... a single light reflected off of the surface will be much less effective.
An example image would help.
 
Thanks for the vid link, very useful :)

Here's two examples of my results. The first shot, to my eyes there are blues and red sparkles all over the place but it just looks like glass in the photo. I had a little more joy with the 2nd but its still not really representive of what im seeing.



 
With this type of subject, the difference between success and failure can be a tiny change to the lighting.
The best approach generally is to have a series of tiny light sources hitting the subject from several different angles, so that some light is refracted through the diamonds and other light is reflected from the surface, and to have a (relatively) large light source overhead, to provide a degree of fill, as necessary. You can easily enhance the colours simply by fitting lighting gels over some of the lights. BTW, a LED torch is pretty massive compared to the size of the subject, you'll need to mask off most of it to turn it into a small light source - or move the torches much further away, but if you do that you'll probably run out of lighting power.

From a physics viewpoint, diamond is a strange material. It's basically just carbon, but with the atoms arranged in straight lines, this causes the light to refract and reflect differently to other materials, and because of this there is no "textbook" way of getting the angles right.
 
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thanks for that, i'll try smaller light sources if i can find some! I wasnt ignoring the reply, i posted this on the day i left for my hols and just got back today!
 
If you want sparkle, you need multiple small light sources - check out the ceilings and window displays of jewellers shops. Then a larger softer light to lift the shadows, as Garry said, though you may not need it, depending on how the small lights are positioned. Eg if you had four positioned in a surrounding circle, just as an example, then each light would fill-in the shadow from the one opposite - you get the idea, though three or even two may be enough. Start with one light, and build one at a time.
 
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