Jewelry Photography: High Key on a Horizontal Plane

[eastcoast909]

Bloo:

You constantly amaze me with your attention to the details that are required to produce high quality captures of these pieces.

Again you have produced a posting that is full of the information required to understand the painstaking care that you take with your work and will give all those who aspire to photograph jewellery a benchmark to shoot at.

It is not hard to understand now why your pieces show as well as they do.

Bravo!

[PhotosGuy]

Nice. Can't have enough of these! You are going to put a link here, aren't you?
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=52418

I'll add it to:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=58609&highlight=cobble

[Mike Panic]

what was used to hold the ring in the first post?

[PhotosGuy]

You've produced a great "How to" series on relativly shadowless lighting. On a budget, too! We should start seeing more jewelry shots in this forum soon. ;-)

[DocFrankenstein]

Photographing jewelry turned out to be much more challenging than I expected. (as usual) :)

http://andrew4137.fotopic.net/p12534231.html

With photographing diamonds and other transparent stones, it's so hard to make white background, sparkling diamond and properly exposed metal at the same time. Esp. with the ghetto home brewed lighting setup.

Anybody knows a bright lightsource which is really directed that can be used as the sparkle light?

[DocFrankenstein]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/BlooDog/DiaEmer1.jpg

This thing is a nightmare.

You need a dome for all the diamods, but you need the positioning of sparkle lights for the green stone geometry...

If I had to shoot it, I'd brobably do 2 setups... one for lighting the diamond, and showing the geometry... etc...

The other one for everything else... and then paste 2 images together.

[PhotosGuy]

... and then paste 2 images together. Maybe blend them together would be better. Paste will slow down your hard drive!

[Adam Hicks]

Hey Bloo how much for that bangle? :) My wife would die...

[Claire]

I am not even reading how you shoot the jewellery. I'm just drooling over the emerald necklace. :)

[PhotosGuy]

The difference between working with a 4x5 view camera and a DSLR is like the difference between getting a donkey and a terrier to jump through a hoop. There's an anology! :D:D We used to shoot 8X10" "polaroids" for ADs who couldn't visualize what they saw on the ground glass. A B&W sheet of neg film processed in Dektol, "fixed" & washed in about 2 minutes, squeeged off & slapped on a viewer. This show & tell was an extra billable item & it made them feel that we were doing our best to help them to CYA. Plus it was a fun part of the dog & pony show that gave us a 10 minute break. ;)

[PhotosGuy]

I've never been able to figure out why some ADs insist upon going on a shoot. I can see it if you're going to shoot something which is really elaborate with a cast of fifty people. :D:D:D It gets them out of the office, proves their input is indenspensable, & allows them to brag about how they "saved the client account" when they made critical on-the-spot changes to the turkey photographers set-up! :D

Someday, but me a beer & I'll tell you all about the 1-month job for Ford of Europe in Italy that incorporated 5 ADs (NY, London (2), Rome, Naples), an AE from Germany, 3 models, stylist, wives & hangers-on, etc., & out of all these, only one swingin' di*k could speak Italian & English!