Jewellery Photography

[SparklingSilver]

Hi

I have a website and am trying to take pictures of silver jewllery and giftware. I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction.

Having bought a light tent I am having great difficulty with the lighting aspects of photography. Someone recommended taking pictures on a bright cloudy day, on macro without a flash. Some of the photos look ok and some either have a blue or orange background colour.

I did read somewhere that you can use low voltage halogen bulbs. Has anyone know if this right or can you use normal halogen bulbs?

If anyone could help me, it would be greatfully apprecaited. :)

Thanks.

Lucia

[René Damkot]

Sounds like a white balance issue to me. (but posting some examples might clarify the issue)
Why not do a custom WB or shoot RAW and adjust WB afterward?

For further lighting tips: here (http://www.photoflexlightingschool.com/Lighting_Lessons/Basic_Lighting/Product___Still_Life/Jewelry_1/index.html) and here (http://www.photoflexlightingschool.com/Lighting_Lessons/Basic_Lighting/Product___Still_Life/Ring/index.html). And there is lots more on the net....

[mjordan]

Since you are shooting static objects, you don't need a lot of bright lights... but you do need even light around your tent. You can use several regular light bulbs in the aluminum reflectors you can get at the hardware store (the bigger the better) or frosted white bulbs or the white floresent type bulbs. You don't need bright haloygen lights. They will give you hot spots because they will literely power through the tent. You are going to need to use a tripod anyway, so it won't mater if you shoot at a slow shutter speed to go with the lower power lights. You also want at least f16 at your lowest ISO to give you good depth of field and low noise on your images. This is why a tripod is necessary, since your shutter speeds will be in the seconds probably.

And as pointed out, either set a custom color balance, or shoot a black/gray/white card (something like the WhiBal would be great for this) and adjust to the white and black points when you bring it into Photoshop (if that is what you are using). I normally shoot in raw and take a picture of a WhiBal card and as long as I don't change my lights, I can adjust the first one when I convert from raw to Tif and use that color balance for all of them. If you have room, you can leave the white source card in all of the pictures and just crop it out during processing. This way you will have a white balance source to adjust each image that you use.

Mike

[SparklingSilver]

Thanks for your help :)

I'll let you know how I get on.

[Gerry@Rick]

It would be easier to comment if you posted some examples of the shots that you're not happy with.;)