Photographing jewellery can be tricky, but with a few concepts and budget below US$500 it is possible to achieve near-professional look of the photographs. This guide is intended for absolute beginners. Terminology is simplified, and camera adjustments are discussed with only jewellery in mind.
1. Equipment 1.1 Digital SLR Biggest spend for near-professional look of jewellery photography is for the digital SLR. This is an absolute must. Second-hand camera will be as good. Camera without many features and without high Mega-Pixel rate will work just as fine. 3 Mega Pixel is more than enough. Note that what makes the difference is the quality of the optical system, not the number of actual pixels. Digital SLR will allow you to manually adjust every aspect of the camera. Automatic modes are not appropriate for jewellery. 1.2 Lighting Avoid using any flashes. Don't use camera's built in flash. Don't buy stand-alone flashes. In fact, don't buy any lighting equipment. Desk lamps 60W-100W will do just fine. Photo tent will help a lot, but is not mandatory. You get find them for as little as US$20. Terminology varies, so "Photo Tent" will also be called "Light Cube", or "Soft Light Box". Do your searching and find one approx 20" (50cm) in size. You will need 3 lights. Two matted lights -- soft lights, and one reflector light. Place one matted light left of the area for jewellery, and one to the right. Place reflector light near where the camera is. Whatever you do, avoid mixing light types. Use only non-fluorescent lights, and isolate your photo 'lab' away from natural light. 1.3 Tripod To have freedom with many settings that will be a must, we will have to use longer exposures. For longer exposures to achieve maximum sharpness, we'll need a tripod. Our hand shakes too much, when camera runs at exposition 1/2s or 1/5s. Buy a 'tripod' for US$10-$20. You don't need a heavy duty tripod. If your setup will be on a desk, you can chose mini tripod - approx 10" (25cm), and stand tripod on the desk as well, or longer tripod, approx 50" (125cm) and stand it on the floor.
2. Setup Position the lights as described above. Two desk lamps with soft light (irrelevant if you are using photo tent -- the tent is there to soften the light), and reflector light at the front. I keep the cube open at the front, for easier adjustments and photographs, unless jewellery is highly reflective of the image of me taking photograph. Uniform background colour is recommended. White background works great. Black background is a little harder to work with. I use one of the white wooden shelves that was sitting in the garrage. Hardware stores will sell these for a few dollars. Jewellery neck stands look effective only on some pieces, but for most laying on the white surface is the best.
3. Jewelry Arrangement Spend time arranging jewellery. Clean the jewellery if needed. Polish and remove finger prints. Lay it nicely. For chains, spend time to even out all links and to lay it in
4. Taking Photographs Set your camera to manual. This is where you can adjust all settings yourself. You can leave auto-focus on if you wish, that is about the only setting you can have automatic. Disable camera flash. With static lighting and without using flashes, you can spend time moving the lights until you get perfect setup, before taking shots. Learn the following 5 camera adjustments: Aperature (f-number), Sensitivity (ISO number), Shutter Speed (Exposure), White Balance, and Focus. These 5 are your bread and butter. 4.1 Aperature Also known as f-number. This setting widens or narrows the lens, limiting the amount of light that comes into the camera. This directly affects shutter speed, and film sensitivity (since we're using
5. Post-Processing Restrain youself from using too many features of the photo editing software. All you need to do is manually adjust Brightness and Contrast, and perhaps use 'Sharpen' feature. Don't apply any automatic adjustments, as these will get confused with too much white in the photo, or too much black. Crop to the area you want to keep, save in internet-friendly format (eg 400x300) and you've got a near-professional photograph. Reuse the same photograph for 'zoom-in' crops. You won't be making images larger, instead you'll be cropping from your original, adjusting and saving.
About The Author
Sasha Petrovich works for Phaze 3 Gallery as technical consultant, including photographing all the jewellery for printed and online material. View his works at Phaze 3 Gallery website http://www.phaze3.com.au.