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. EquipmentAlso known as ISO number. This used to be film property, and expressed in numbers like ISO200, ISO400, ISO800 etc. The higher the number, more sensitive the film, less light it needs, and thus more expensive. In Digital SLR's this is merely just a setting, but the higher the number, more noise camera will capture. The more light you have, you can go lower with this number. For our limited lighting, ISO800 or ISO1600 will be fine, but try not to use ISO3200 -- it adds visible noise.1.3 TripodAdd to Digg Bookmark with del.icio.us Add to Newsvine1.1 Digital SLR4.3 Shutter SpeedLearn 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.With different colours present in every light source, our eyes naturally adjust to what white is. Cameras try to do the same and for general photography are quite good at it. However, for jewellery, you'll want to try all manual pre-sets yourself and chose best result. If everything fails, manually adjust white balance, until it's good. You won't need to keep changing this setting from one jewellery piece to another.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.Whatever you do, avoid mixing light types. Use only non-fluorescent lights, and isolate your photo 'lab' away from natural light.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.Through July, customers will save 20% on the Omikron Design collection. All designs are in stock and include free shipping and no sales tax.Digital SLR will allow you to manually adjust every aspect of the camera. Automatic modes are not appropriate for jewellery.5. Post-ProcessingFor more information or high resolution images, please contact: Alexis Endicott YLighting.com | YLiving.com Tel: 800-236-9100 Email: Email Contact4.2 SensitivityAlso known as exposure, it is a measure of time camera will be taking the light. When photographing moving objects, you would want this fairly short: 1/200 or or 1/400. However, we're taking static objects, and with the tripod camera is static as well. This gives us flexibility in going as low as 1/30 or 1/10, or even 1/2. Value 1/2 means that camera takes light from the object for half a second. If anything moves during that half a second, photograph will be blurred.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.Jewellery neck stands look effective only on some pieces, but for most laying on the white surface is the best.If your background is black, you'll want it under-exposed. This will keep the black background black, remove some imperfections, but leave the jewellery just fine.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.3. Jewelry ArrangementAbout Omikron Design Omikron Design's (OmikronDesign.com) main objective is to produce objects that enhance and illuminate spaces through light and outstanding design. The company's designs, which are made in Milan, Italy, combine the performance of lighting technology to an exclusive industrial design. The Omikron Design collection is dedicated to those who need imagination and beauty to live.About YLighting YLighting ( www. YLighting.com ) was founded in 2001 with the idea that modern lighting is functional art but buying it shouldn't be a project in itself. We travel the world to find exciting new designs and give our customers the finest in modern and contemporary lighting, ceiling fans and accessories. We carry over 5,000 designs across more than 110 brands and are one of the largest retailers for brands such as Artemide, Flos, Modern Fan, Foscarini and Louis Poulsen. YLighting serves design-savvy customers, trade professionals and businesses. Our website is a comprehensive lighting resource with the largest collection of product-specific lighting data available.2. SetupNote that what makes the difference is the quality of the optical system, not the number of actual pixels.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.4.5 FocusAdjust shutter speed freely until you get desirable effect. In fact, when taking photographs of jewellery against white background, you will want photos over-exposed. Over-exposure should affect only the white background, where small imperfections of white surface will vanish into pure white. If your camera has light meter, it will display a warning that you have too much light, number 2 or 2.5 could be flashing in your viewfinder. This is good :-).4.6 Taking photographsYou 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.Jewellery is static. It's easy to use manual focus, but auto-focus seems to work just as fine. If camera keeps focusing on the incorrect part, just switch to manual, and away you go. For most applications, auto-focus will be fine though.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.The two-story, six-unit, woodframe apartment building had a manual fire alarm system, but there were no smoke detectors in the unit of origin, and the building was unsprinklered. The men's second-floor apartment was originally a two-bedroom unit, but a third bedroom had been added by installing foam board insulation that divided the living room. A power strip under the bed provided electricity to several appliances and high-intensity grow lamps in the new room; an extension cord was used for some of the connections.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 digital camera, film sensitivity is adjustable like anything else).This setting is responsible for the 'focal lenght'. With high f-number eg f/22 or f/11, when taking jewellery photographs, parts that are close to camera will be focused as well as parts that are further away. With low f-number, eg f/2, only the focused part will be in-focus, and parts of jewellery that are further apart or closer to the camera will become fuzzy. Use this setting as it suits you. You may want to create certain effect, but if you don't, keep this setting to f/11. Overdoing this setting will limit the light coming into the camera, and you'll have to make sacrifices elsewhere to compensate.The occupant of the third bedroom told investigators that he got up to use ihe bathroom and iound a fire at or near the end of his bed when he returned. He tried to alert the other two occupants before he ieft the apartment. A second occupant's clothing caught fire as he escaped, causing severe burns from which he died eight days later. The third occupant was briefly seen near a window, but firefighters later found him in his bedroom, where he had apparently tried unsuccessfully to break out a window using an end table. He had died of smoke inhalation.Omikron Design joins styles of classic European designers such as Vico Magistretti, Piero Castiglioni, and Carlo Forcolini with innovations of young designers such as Gabi Peretto, Jonathan Maltz and Nanni Holén. Their approach is to produce objects that enhance and illuminate spaces through light and outstanding design. As such, their designs are functional, stable, elegant and not susceptible to momentary trends.Digital camera with 6 mega pixels or more will preserve enough of the detail for zoom-in's. If not happy, re-take photos of the detail.View Omikron Designs at YLighting: http://www.ylighting.com/omikron-design-lighting.html .
Copyright (c) 2006 Sasha Petrovich
Author: Sasha Petrovich
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