Jewelry Photography: High Key on a Horizontal Plane

[Bloo Dog]

In this demo, I'm showing basically the same equipment as in the demo involving the pendants. The primary difference is that there are three lights and the environment in which the article is photographed is basically spherical.

The aim of enclosing the shiny object in a completely environment is to eliminate dark spots. Shiny things reflect the world around them. If you enclose it in a white environment, you will minimiize dark reflections, but not necessarily shadows.

In the first set up, I've cut a 4" hole into the side of a ninety-seven cent white plastic mixing bowl using a rotary tool and a cutting wheel. I used a roll of masking tape as my template for the hole. I have a couple of bowls like this one, each with a port (hole) cut in different places to accommodate different angles of view.

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

The placement of your lights will largely depend upon the design of the article to be photographed, its degree of brilliance, and which attributes you want to show. When you photograph semi-translucent stones, it is usually desirable to show color, the cut of the stone (facets) and sometimes the clarity.

Here, I'm showing a sapphire ring.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/BlooDog/3sapphireringlores.jpg

I have managed to show the cut of the ring, though the exact cut isn't easily determined by the photograph. Fortunately, gemstones are sold with a description which indicates the type of cut. In this case, all that is easily determined is that the stone has been cut rather than polished (cabouchon). This type of sapphire is generally nearly-opaque, so it was not possible (or even desirable) for light to pass through it. Note that in some spots there is some flare which shows as either white glare or a lighter violet. It is possible to eliminate this in Photoshop, though I don't attempt to eliminate this. This sort of "fixing" is frowned upon. Generally, it is considered okay to remove flaws in the setting (the meta) because it a manufactured araticle rather than something which occurs in nature.

It is interesting to note that many times whenever a generic representation of a diamond ring or an article containing several diamonds is depicted in an advertisement, a "perfect" image of a diamond is cloned and then inserted into its setting. This is considered ethical as long as the image does not represent a specific item for sale. next time you look at a diamond ad, you may notice that all of the round diamonds look alike.

Note the detail in the side of the ring. The broad light source (the walls of the white sphere) allow for very soft shadows, thus showing the delicate design of the engraving.

Next is a similar setup, except that the port in the white dome has been cut from the top. This is is one way of photographing flat objects which are not shiny. Note that the camera has been mounted on a Bogen arm which is in turn mounted to a Bogen 3047 tripod.

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

[Bloo Dog]

Following is what is called a 'mourning locket.' It is made from rose gold which has copper in it, thus giving it a reddish appearance. It is called a 'mourning locket because in some communities in the nineteenth century and before, it was common for a grieving lover or relative to take a locket of the deceased hair and carry it with him for the duration of the mourning.

It is an antique which dates to about 1890 or so. To achieve the slight shadow, the locket was placed on the horizontal plane and then photographed from above.

The detail shows two doves. The blue spheres are turquoise. The white gems are actually "seed" pearls, or immature pearls taken from mussels or oysters before they could become larger.

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

The following is a very pretty antique gold bangle which dates to about the same period (Victorian). It is enameled gold. The image is straight out of the camera with no Photoshop applied except to blur the engraved name. This piece knocks me out.

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

[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!

[Bloo Dog]

Thank you for the compliment. I hope to take these demos a bit further to reveal some of the complexities of jewelry photography. The dome approach is only one approach, and it doesn't work for all pieces, and it doesn't work for large format film capture, which is the method i used for over ten years until I went digital.

When I began shooting jewelry, I didn't know what I was looking at most of the time. It took me awhile to be able to "see" the piece. I made friends with guys who had been selling jewelry for fifty years. One guy was a photographer himself, though he never photographed jewelry. I still consult him about the nature of certain stones. He isn't always aware of the particular photographic problem until I tell him, but with his vast knowledge, he can usually help me figure out how to fix the problem or how to see what's going on in the stone. It's really quite interesting work. It isn't all just putting the piece under the light and shooting.

Sometimes you need reflectors. That's another demo in the works.

If you have questions about small photography in general, ask. I may have a solution.

[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?

[Bloo Dog]

I am using clear laminating paraffin. You can get it at REAL art supply stores that cater to commercial artists. I think that Calumet sells a tub of the stuff under another name. I'll post a picture of tools and things soon.

[Bloo Dog]

Here's another emerald ring in a platinum setting. I used two Vivitar 285's placed high and to the rear of the dome. Note the broad highlight at the shank of the ring where it meets the horizontal plane. The highlight shows as a band rather than as two separate spots because the light sources were placed far from the dome and their beams overlapped. In effect, the entire interior of the fome became one light source as the light bounced around the dome. This is desirable for many (but not all) styles of jewelry lighting.

Because of the type of mount, the stones allowed light to pass through the bottom of the gem, thus lighting the gem. The setting is platinum with a very thin plating of rhodium to give it a shine.It's the rhodium that gives the platinum its brilliance.

I managed to get the exposure and white balance pretty close, so no color balancing was done. On my monitor, the setting has a little color to it. This is just my preference, but I suspect that when this piece is printed, all color except the green will be desaturated. This will be decided by the art director.

A very small piece of clear laminating paraffin was used beneath the shank of the ring to make it stand up. If you use hot lights (even halogen modeling lights on flash) the paraffin wil soften considerably, so you will have to work fast--- expecially if you use miniscule pieces of the paraffin.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/BlooDog/051373emeraldring.jpg

[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?

[Bloo Dog]

For pinpoint lighting, you can use any light source as long as the color balance is acceptable.

One problem with pinpoint lighting for diamonds is that unless you light the diamond from precisely the correct angle, the diamond will either flare or turn black. If you have several diamonds, you need several light sources to light all of the stones.

Also, the "sparkle" to which you refer is as much a function of the cut of diamond as it is the lighting. I have taken several REALLY bad diamond shots as well as many great ones which i want to post as soon as I find them. Most of my archive is in 4x5 transparency.

I have found that as a rule, broad lighting works best on diamonds for top lighting.

If you backlight, a silver reflector does wonders for the stones facing the camera.

I have some transparency shots that will illustrate what I'm talking about.

[Bloo Dog]

Okay, here are a couple of scans from some transparencies.

I don't particularly like these images, but I am putting them here to show you extreme examples of the challenges of jewelry photography.

These were shot for newspaper advertising so the technical problems are minimized to matters of contrast. Had they been printed in a glossy color magazine, they'd never have been published.

The first piece is an antique piece comprised of diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds. The diamonds are round cut/brilliant (fifty-eight facets per stone).

The sapphires, rubies and emeralds are what are called cabouchon cuts. They are cut and then polished so that they are egg shaped rather than cut to a polygonal shape. Since this was shot on a 4x5 view camera, one studio light was used with a small softbox above. It was also shot on location on the jeweler's premises.

This gives you a good idea why it is much easier to use a dome. By controlling the light and creating soft lighting, I would not have created quite so much glare on so many of the diamonds. Out of all of the diamonds in this piece MAYBE three diamonds are properly lit so that you can see into the interior of the stone. Those which do not suffer from severe glare have turned dark.

Notice that the cabouchon cut gems look quite nice.

Take a look at this and see why a dome of some sort is much preferable to using directional lighting for many pieces of jewelry:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/BlooDog/Pin1.jpg

This next one speaks for itself. It was okay for newsprint, but had it been used in a glossy color mag, it'd have been rejected.

Notice the long diamonds. This is called a baguette cut. This is the most difficult cut to light well when there are several of them side-by side because they reflect light in different directions. Had I used a dome, these diamonds would have been evenly lit. I might have even created images that I was happy with. Instead, I got this mess:

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

My purpose for posting these images is to illustrate some of the hazards of jewelry photography. Some designs and cuts are nightmares to light.

Since I began using the Canon 10D for this type of photography, image capture is much easier. I no longer have to scan transparencies, and I no longer have to store these easily-scratched 4x5 pieces of plastic. My lab is glad to see me gon because nobody has to hear me whine about the color cast caused by unreplenished chemistry.

Though I have lost the swings and tilts of the view camera since switching to DSLR, I have compensated for them in the convenience afforded by the Canon 10D and the 50mm macro lens.

More to come...

[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...

[Bloo Dog]

That bangle was shot about seven months ago. If I remember correctly, it was a set of two and together the price tag was in the neighborhood of $17,000. They were estate pieces from the Victorian period.

It might have been possible to have shot two separate images of the brooch and then blend them, but that would have required two lighting setups. Remember, those two were shot on a 4x5 view camera with a studio light. 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.

In digital photography, the most common solution for presenting diamonds as perfectly lit stones which reside on the same plane is to clone one diamond (or two if the tops of the diamond reside on two planes) and then drop it into the setting. This is more commonly done in generic representations ("here 's a diamond ring") rather in specific representations of jewelry for sale ("this diamond ring costs $50,000"). If you look at enough jewelry advertisements (especially the ones in the jewelry trade magazines) you'll notice that this is common. You won't see it done in specific pieces for sale very often, though (if ever).

[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. ;)

[Bloo Dog]

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.

I had an AD come for a simple product shoot once. It made no sense. All it did was slow me down. I did a headshot for a political candidate. I had an AD and a campaign manager looking over my shoulder. That was really productive.

I rarely do work directly for agencies. Now I work for the client but the AD will sometimes contact me if he/she doesn't like an image. That's happened on this catalogue thing I'm in the middle of. The beauty of digital is that the AD can be in another part of the country and i can upload the image. If I have a question or if someone else has a question, the phone rings. Usually, I work undisturbed.

[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!

[SuperHuman21]

How come there's so little left of the thread?

[PhotosGuy]

How come there's so little left of the thread? Because Bloo left in a huff. And why are you resurrecting a 7 year old thread, anyway?
If you need Jewelery info...
Jewelry Photography Lighting Tips (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=306395)

Simple Light setup for Necklace photography (http://www.akelstudio.com/blog/project-in-development-inexpensive-way-to-shoot-expensive-jewelry/#more-8548)

Simple Light setup for Necklace photography (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1139228)

And since you used a descriptive title & are "Search challenged", look at the links at the very bottom left hand corner of this page.

[tomj]

"sheet of neg film processed in Dektol, "fixed" & washed in about 2 minutes"

Wow, that brings back some memories!

[SuperHuman21]

Because Bloo left in a huff. And why are you resurrecting a 7 year old thread, anyway?
If you need Jewelery info...
Jewelry Photography Lighting Tips (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=306395)

Simple Light setup for Necklace photography (http://www.akelstudio.com/blog/project-in-development-inexpensive-way-to-shoot-expensive-jewelry/#more-8548)

Simple Light setup for Necklace photography (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1139228)

And since you used a descriptive title & are "Search challenged", look at the links at the very bottom left hand corner of this page.

That's too bad.

Wow, I don't know how I missed the corner threads suggestions, I've never noticed it. :o

Thanks for the links, I've already seen pretty much all of it; I'm just always looking for something new.