Taking photographs of jewellery

[Haradan]

Hi All

New poster here. My wife has started an internet business selling small items of jewellery on eBay.

We obviously need to take pictures of the items. We have a Panasonic Lumix DMC F27. I have a tripod.

What would be the best way of illuminating the jewellery to get the best effect, eliminating shadows etc.

We don't want to spend too much on seperate flashes or fancy gizmos.

I had an idea of creating a 'light box', basically a box illuminated by a bulb of some sort, but was unsure of the best form of lighting to use.

 

[digipix]

Welcome,
My wife used to run an antique's shop and we tried shooting lots of small pieces of silver,quite difficult at first but keep practicing.We bought a small light tent and found the best time to shoot was around lunchtime/outside on the patio table.(check ebay for lights/tents)

We only used a digital camera at the time,using reflectors also help to control light/shadows.Wouldn't recommend the light tents for anything large as they do crease a lot which shows up on your pics?

Best of luck.
digipix

 

[W.Smith]

I had an idea of creating a 'light box', basically a box illuminated by a bulb of some sort, but was unsure of the best form of lighting to use.

Yes, Haradan, a light tent is good. You can make one yourself. Or buy one. Some of those come with stretchy material, which goes some way to deal with creases.

You need equal lighting on both sides for the light tent. Two flashguns would be ideal. But 2 desklamps, preferably with daylight temperature bulbs (just a couple bucks each) will do too. Your shutter times will get longer, but that's what you've got the tripod for. Don't forget to use the 10 second self-timer.

And don't forget what you can do in post processing. Sparkle, for instance, rarely appears in still photos. But you can fake it in PP:

Have fun!

 

[Yv]

I bought from ebay last year, specifically for taking pictures of small stuff we wanted to sell, a light tent and two table top daylight rated studio lights, and white, red, blue and black backrounds as a kit. It was about £60 as I recall [also had a small table top tripod] and it paid for itself very quickly, just selling s/h stuff.

Took this just using the lights positions to create some shadows for depth, but no flash. Look at the top right hand bauble, you can actually see the lights outside the tent and the camera lens poking through the flap, which if nothing else, shows you how they work