photographing jewellery Help

[lisa marie claire]

Can anyone shed some light on the matter of reflections and too much dazzle in jewellery shots?
i am photographing jewellery with a digital camera and i am getting quite good results!But theres one big problem jewellery is very reflective especially when you are putting several pieces in one shot! i have tried to reflect the light with all sorts but its not been entirely successfull! i wandered if setting everything out and covering with a large matt clear opaque plastic bowl with a lense hole cut out would work ? PLEASE HELP!!!!!

[John_T]

Get a circular polarized filter such as the Hoya cir-polarizing filter. You didn't mention what camera you have, but you will need an adapter to hold the filter. Lacking an adapter, you could hold the filter in front of the lens, but that is pretty awkward.

You rotate the filter to get the polarity that knocks out the reflections. You can leave a little bit of gleam so that the jewelry doesn't look dead.

[toglenn]

The best way to stop reflections on shiny objects such as chrome ect, is to use a covering tent of some type of defusing materal with the lighting on the outside and a whole for the lens.

These are available commerically of they can be built. I have used blue print drawing materal with supporting frame. Polarizing will not do it.

Kodak used to have Pro manual which explained the technique.

[jasonco]

Toglen,

Doi you have a photo fo your setup you might kndly post for me? I am keen to see what this setup looks like. I have this issue too for some shiny giftware I photograph.

Any tips for photographing a silver goblet that really reflective?

Cheers
Jason

[lisa marie claire]

thanks everyone for your help! i am using a samsung digimax 340 camera.
i think what i need to do is : get a large plastic bowl matte finished or opaque
cut a hole for the lense of the camera
then you need an ajustable table that can be put at angles to put your subject on and cover with your bowl
then you need alot of light and a reflective umbrella to bounce the light in the direction of your bowl

the bowl dissolves the light and takes away the glare you can get and reflection of yourself too!
im off out today to get my photography ingredients so i will let you know how they turn out !

[toglenn]

lisa marie claire discribes her setup very well, using a bowl as a "tent".

Last time I used something like this was about 40 years ago so a picture of the setup would be very difficult but there are many new things that could be used to achieve the same effects. The bowl and tent serve as sort of a "Green House Effect" for light!

snead










jasonco wrote:
Toglen,

Doi you have a photo fo your setup you might kndly post for me? I am keen to see what this setup looks like. I have this issue too for some shiny giftware I photograph.

Any tips for photographing a silver goblet that really reflective?

Cheers
Jason

[MediaMagic]

If your bowl idea doesn't give the result you are looking for you may want to try using a simple and inexpensive item called a softbox. I have about 4 of these for the canon EX speedlites from LumiQuest. I've done a couple of jewelry shoots and had excellent results by using the softboxes. This was using film at the time but I believe the scenario should translate to digital easily.

What the softbox is: A little box like apparatus that attaches to the flash via velcro so that the flash is diffused through a whitish 'screen'. It allows for a slight reflection from the precious metal yet not nearly the magnitude of reflection without. To me the amount of reflected light looked fantastic, better than a reflection from a strobe/umbrella. And, another little trick you can do if you are using more than a single flash is to tape a piece of colored gel (matching the stone, shades of red or pink for ruby, etc. but, if you are doing the shoot for a catalogue you may be limited to white light) over the main flash, aimed, either slightly off or directly above the stone - depending on the type of effect you want to produce, and then angle two diffused flashes to intersect slightly off center, either to the sides, or front and back, or however you envision. You'd have to mess with it to get exact angles to your taste but the two diffused flashes give the metal a very deep appealing appearance while keeping the colored gel from appearing on the background and the colored gel gives a deeper color to the stone. The colored gel doesn't really work with a single flash because the ambience is altered intensely.

You'd want to experiment with ISO, aperture and shutter settings because you can get dramatically different results by varying these settings using the same light angles. It does take some trial and error but the shots you can produce with softboxes this way, with or without the gel, can be astounding, especially with single piece close-ups.

LumiQuest also makes a flash top reflector, called the PoketBounce, which mounts similarly to the softbox yet bounces the light from a few inches above the flash rather than from the ceiling or an umbrella. The light this way is a little brighter than a ceiling bounce and more focused than an umbrella bounce.

Both of these products have come in handy. I don't use them often but under the right conditions they can allow you to get a better shot than you could've gotten otherwise. At about 20 bucks for the softbox and 10 for the pocketbounce (in 1997 anyway), they're nice and inexpensive tools to have in the bag 'o goodies.

David

[lisa marie claire]

well thank you i will try that idea next if i have no success!any chance you could send me some pics of your set up or flash box as im not exactly sure im on your wavelength!allso could you send me a good jewellery picture to see what your taste is ?
i am a designer jeweller and i am just setting up bussiness! contact lisa@lisamarieclaire.com