Today I have been working on one of my old hobbies; Photography.
To say that it has not been going well is a bit of an understatement. Taking pictures of jewelry can be quite complicated! I have looked up every tutorial I could find on the subject. The majority agree on two points; use a tripod and a digital imaging program. If I were going to add anything to that I might say; experiment.
I have tried setting up a light box. This was terrible. All of my silver looked tarnished or blurry. I ultimately used natural light because the silver stayed truer to color. Next I tried different colored backgrounds. I started with white but found that there wasn't enough contrast between the background and some of the pieces. Black worked better for lighter colored pieces.
I really believe that the only benefit to using a digital slr is the ability to be able to dispose of the bad shots. If you have a digital 35mm you probably have more control over your contrast, which seemed to be the item I had to fiddle with most in editing.
Once I got to editing there were basically only two things that needed correcting; sharpness and contrast.
My photos were already sharp. I increased the sharpness as a way of bringing up additional highlights. Normally this would be a bad thing, causing specks to appear on the photo, and this may happen to yours. I just found that it worked beautifully for me.
I can not harp enough about contrast. I sometimes find that the stones don't look anything like they do in "real life" (as opposed to "photographic life"). If I adjust the contrast of the image I can correct this. It also helps your silver to shine.
I don't claim to be any kind of expert in this area, just someone in need of digital images. I have said it before, but it bears repeating: EXPERIMENT!
I have added a few of the shots to my blog and you can judge my results for yourselves.
Good luck with your own project.
To say that it has not been going well is a bit of an understatement. Taking pictures of jewelry can be quite complicated! I have looked up every tutorial I could find on the subject. The majority agree on two points; use a tripod and a digital imaging program. If I were going to add anything to that I might say; experiment.
I have tried setting up a light box. This was terrible. All of my silver looked tarnished or blurry. I ultimately used natural light because the silver stayed truer to color. Next I tried different colored backgrounds. I started with white but found that there wasn't enough contrast between the background and some of the pieces. Black worked better for lighter colored pieces.
I really believe that the only benefit to using a digital slr is the ability to be able to dispose of the bad shots. If you have a digital 35mm you probably have more control over your contrast, which seemed to be the item I had to fiddle with most in editing.
Once I got to editing there were basically only two things that needed correcting; sharpness and contrast.
My photos were already sharp. I increased the sharpness as a way of bringing up additional highlights. Normally this would be a bad thing, causing specks to appear on the photo, and this may happen to yours. I just found that it worked beautifully for me.
I can not harp enough about contrast. I sometimes find that the stones don't look anything like they do in "real life" (as opposed to "photographic life"). If I adjust the contrast of the image I can correct this. It also helps your silver to shine.
I don't claim to be any kind of expert in this area, just someone in need of digital images. I have said it before, but it bears repeating: EXPERIMENT!
I have added a few of the shots to my blog and you can judge my results for yourselves.
Good luck with your own project.
