Product and jewelery photography advice

GR3Z

GR3Z

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Name
Graeme
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My girlfriend has her own business and selling shabby chic giftware and accessories and is adding jewelry to her stock, and I've got the job of photographing all the stock as she's in the process of building her own site...

My first job is to take photos of the jewelry I'm after advice on the best way to do this With the kit I have

Wireless triggers
2x smartflashes
2x speedlites
2x white shoot through umbrellas
2x reflective umbrella
1x 60x60 softbox for the Speedlites
80cm 4in1 reflector
White paper
Whitetile board

Just to add its mainly bracelets and necklaces and the odd ring so what's best to position the brackets and necklaces

Cheers
Graeme
 
I read somewhere that Jewellery product shots look better against a black background. Maybe pick up some sort of fabric. Never tried it myself though.
 
What type of shots do you want to take? An example of the type of product will help too.

If it's jewellery/jewellery type items then it can be complicated in theory, although the learning process is pretty intuitive.

The starting point is generally a fairly big softbox (get one to fit the SmartFlash, you'll want a modelling lamp that your hotshoe flashgun doesn't have). That will make it easy/possible to get diffused specular highlights.

Then you'll need to go in the opposite direction (small, hard light sources) to add sparkle, and your hotshoe flashguns are ideal for this. A bit of black something over the flash with a hole in it to make the physical size of the light smaller, and to let the light out of just a small hole. Then some silver foil, cinefoil or black card to create both highlights and to add black.

And a background. Tell her that they will look far more punchy on black (they will) and get yourself something black and reflective, such as black acrylic or a bit of smoked glass, this will allow you to create natural product reflections, a lot of people sod about adding reflections in PS, which is usually totally unnecessary and a complete waste of time.

There are loads of props out there for jewellery photos, such as 'glass' heads, to get them to hang properly. Items can also be suspended on thread, propped up with various bits, kept in place with Blutak etc - that's usually the hardest bit.

If the work/time/cost is justified (and this will take some experience to get right) you can also photograph items on a model, then take a still life shot of it arranged in exactly the same way (but this time the lighting will be for the jewellery, not for the model) and drop the still life shot on top of the item on the model. It needs to be scaled up a tiny bit. See this shot.
jewellery.jpg
 
From the sound of it, you are photographing all the stock to put on the website shop. Is that right?
If that's the case, I wouldn't be using flash but standard lights.
Make some kind of a lightbox (opalescent paper etc. ) so that you can set it up and just photograph one piece after another like this: http://www.beaverbrooks.co.uk/jewellery
If you are advertising a particular piece of jewellery, then by all means use a more elaborate setup with a model, highlights, etc but if you are doing many things for a shop, you will be there for ever more unless you standardise it.
 
I would want some hard lighting in there too - a snoot, a gridded reflector etc. otherwise, you are just going to have fairly flat uninteresting lighting. The last time I shot something like this, I used a shoot through umbrella, and a gridded snoot and a gridded reflector
 
clark kent said:
From the sound of it, you are photographing all the stock to put on the website shop. Is that right?
If that's the case, I wouldn't be using flash but standard lights.
Make some kind of a lightbox (opalescent paper etc. ) so that you can set it up and just photograph one piece after another like this: http://www.beaverbrooks.co.uk/jewellery
If you are advertising a particular piece of jewellery, then by all means use a more elaborate setup with a model, highlights, etc but if you are doing many things for a shop, you will be there for ever more unless you standardise it.
Click to expand...
I take your point re the time needed, but those photos are truly terrible - would you spend thousands £ on one of those products, based on those photos? I wouldn't.
 
You can make a simple flashgun snoot from a can of pringles. Best bit is you eat the pringles first :) Works quite well. I'm sure you could add something on the end with smaller holes if you wanted to make tiny highlights.
 
you could also do "lifestyle shots" of the products, very effective and much easier
 
Thanks for all the advice well ive taken on board what some of you said and here are a few test shots, didnt have time to experiment so they are rushed as ive got to go to work tonight :(

All ive done is crop and adjusted the blacks using level in PS
ive also included a pull back shot of the setup

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Test 1 by GR3Z, on Flickr

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Test 2 by GR3Z, on Flickr

3.

Test 3 by GR3Z, on Flickr

4.

Test 4 by GR3Z, on Flickr

5.

Camera Roll-232 by GR3Z, on Flickr
 
This i something ive been meaning to have a go at, i think you've made a good start but they don't look quite excuse the term "bling" enough.

Might be how far the blacks have been pushed? or slight underexposure? i would also try moving the flashgun snoot around to camera right, to see if it makes any improvements in the highlights? just an idea, it could be a crap one mind lol

I think the black glass acrylic idea garry suggested is a great point too.
 
ChrisAshkettle said:
This i something ive been meaning to have a go at, i think you've made a good start but they don't look quite excuse the term "bling" enough.

Might be how far the blacks have been pushed? or slight underexposure? i would also try moving the flashgun snoot around to camera right, to see if it makes any improvements in the highlights? just an idea, it could be a crap one mind lo

I think the black glass acrylic idea garry suggested is a great point too.
Click to expand...

Like a said it was all done a little rushed including the adjustments as wanted to get them online and posted before I went to work, (on my phone now )... I've taken Garry's advice and ordered a A4 piece of 3mm black acrylic off eBay only a few quid so gonna give that a whirl when it arrives... My main reason for getting them up was for tips and pointers on how to set the lights up?
 
Where to start...
I think the problem that jumps out here is the arrangement of the piece. As I said earlier, easy enough to overcome with heads and similar props, but at the moment it's difficult to see past the sort of scrunched up look.

I'm glad that you've ordered a piece of black acrylic, that background you're using seems to have a textured, absorbent material - totally wrong, it soaks up light and acts as a light absorber, and is responsible for all those areas of deep shadow with no detail. As a result (and exaggerating for the sake of effect) everything is either white or black with nothing in between -

Camera height - think about where it needs to be to show the item at its best, not just where it is convenient to have it.

Lighting - dependent on subject and on the effect you want to achieve, but basically you're close to a starting point here...
You need a larger softbox and you should fit it to your SmartFlash, as I suggested before. It needs to go BEHIND your subject, not in front as in your setup shot, so that it is pointing downwards and slightly forwards. And it needs to be closer, especially with shiny subjects. See the Lencarta lighting blog entry I linked to.

Your hotshoe flash shouldn't be at that angle. You will need to experiment, but a starting point might be much further to the right.

Your 5-in-1 reflector is a very useful tool, but it's doing virtually nothing where it is. It can only reflect light that's reaching it, and hardly any is. Mind you, it will do something when you move the hotshoe flash. But the reflector needs to be much closer, just out of shot in fact. Where it is, the light (from the hotshoe flash, when the light is actually reaching it) has to travel far too far from the subject to the reflector and back again, and the inverse square law means that it has lost nearly all of its power by then. If you add in the fact that the reflector is only about 70% efficient, you can see why you need to move it very close.

Try those suggestions and come back with some more examples - you'll get there:)
 
I still think you better off with a white background. You get light reflected from underneath which lights up the whole piece a lot better. Black won't do that.
If you look at the big jewellery sites, they are generally against white and that's for a good reason.
If you are photographing one or two pieces, you can light them individually and experiment to your heart's content but if you've got a hundred or two, I promise you, you'll be there 'til kingdom come if you don't standardise it.
Also, everything can be photographed against white but not everything can be done against black. There are lots of dark stones (jet etc.) that you'd be wasting your time with.
 
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Garry Edwards said:
Where to start...
I think the problem that jumps out here is the arrangement of the piece. As I said earlier, easy enough to overcome with heads and similar props, but at the moment it's difficult to see past the sort of scrunched up look.

I'm glad that you've ordered a piece of black acrylic, that background you're using seems to have a textured, absorbent material - totally wrong, it soaks up light and acts as a light absorber, and is responsible for all those areas of deep shadow with no detail. As a result (and exaggerating for the sake of effect) everything is either white or black with nothing in between -

Camera height - think about where it needs to be to show the item at its best, not just where it is convenient to have it.

Lighting - dependent on subject and on the effect you want to achieve, but basically you're close to a starting point here...
You need a larger softbox and you should fit it to your SmartFlash, as I suggested before. It needs to go BEHIND your subject, not in front as in your setup shot, so that it is pointing downwards and slightly forwards. And it needs to be closer, especially with shiny subjects. See the Lencarta lighting blog entry I linked to.

Your hotshoe flash shouldn't be at that angle. You will need to experiment, but a starting point might be much further to the right.

Your 5-in-1 reflector is a very useful tool, but it's doing virtually nothing where it is. It can only reflect light that's reaching it, and hardly any is. Mind you, it will do something when you move the hotshoe flash. But the reflector needs to be much closer, just out of shot in fact. Where it is, the light (from the hotshoe flash, when the light is actually reaching it) has to travel far too far from the subject to the reflector and back again, and the inverse square law means that it has lost nearly all of its power by then. If you add in the fact that the reflector is only about 70% efficient, you can see why you need to move it very close.

Try those suggestions and come back with some more examples - you'll get there:)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the replies guys , I've not actually got a softbox for my smartflashes yet what with Xmas, hoping to get one come payday..... But will defo try your suggestions Gary with what I've available at the mo...

clark kent said:
I still think you better off with a white background. You get light reflected from underneath which lights up the whole piece a lot better. Black won't do that.
If you look at the big jewellery sites, they are generally against white and that's for a good reason.
If you are photographing one or two pieces, you can light them individually and experiment to your heart's content but if you've got a hundred or two, I promise you, you'll be there 'til kingdom come if you don't standardise it.
Also, everything can be photographed against white but not everything can be done against black. There are lots of dark stones (jet etc.) that you'd be wasting your time with.
Click to expand...

I do have some white acrylic although is a little on the large side 8x4 ft :) but I'll try it out see what I can do, as for standardizing may set up I've only got about thirty pieces to do as its still early days with her business and hoping to do them all at once but thanks for the advice and I'll definitely bare it in mind for the future
 
a quick go with some of the wife's bracelets. It is harder than it looks, to get the faceted crystals to look anything like they should.





 
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When I photographed my sister-in-law's silver jewellery, we put it on a black velvet background with white reflectors & white LED lights suspended slightly above. Not the best rig, but I was photographing the pieces in their kitchen at half 9 at night. The LED UFO lights managed to reflect the light off the pieces really well. I'll see if I can find the photos. The trickiest pieces were the fingerprint jewellery, as tiny babies don't have much of a fingerprint in the first place, so trying to get the whorls distinguishable was a bit of a faff. :)
 
Been playing again, I had ago using black acrylic this time and a slightly different set up. ignore the labels as i will remove them when once im happy with the lighting/set up

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Untitled by GR3Z, on Flickr

2.

Untitled by GR3Z, on Flickr

3.

Untitled by GR3Z, on Flickr

4.
Untitled by GR3Z, on Flickr

5.

Untitled by GR3Z, on Flickr


set up

set up by GR3Z, on Flickr
 
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You're getting somewhere near. Where the blackglass is photographing as grey instead of black, it's because the camera angle is wrong and you're picking up the softbox reflected in the blackglass. The correct angle is of course a combination of the angle of the softbox as well as the camera, and it's pretty critical.

Your hotshoe flashgun is far too high, and it needs to be at maybe 45 degrees rather than something nearer to 90 degrees - not sure about that, trial and error is your friend here.
 
Garry Edwards said:
You're getting somewhere near. Where the blackglass is photographing as grey instead of black, it's because the camera angle is wrong and you're picking up the softbox reflected in the blackglass. The correct angle is of course a combination of the angle of the softbox as well as the camera, and it's pretty critical.

Your hotshoe flashgun is far too high, and it needs to be at maybe 45 degrees rather than something nearer to 90 degrees - not sure about that, trial and error is your friend here.
Click to expand...

That's where I must be going wrong as every shot had the reflection of the soft box in, covering the the whole lot, so I just adjusted the blacks in PP, I'd find it difficult to not get the reflection to be honest I'd have to have the large softbox some distance away to achieve this what sort of aperture would recommend I'm using around f16/f18 it varies depending on the size of the subject otherwise it's not all in focus, but worry if I move the SB to far away it just won't have the power at high apertures
 
Garry Edwards said:
I take your point re the time needed, but those photos are truly terrible - would you spend thousands £ on one of those products, based on those photos? I wouldn't.
Click to expand...

Websites pose an interesting issue. Often the design of a site is "white" and the products that go onto that site need to be on a white background. Ideally, we might say shoot the jewellery on black, however, if the site also sells other items, or the corporate look is white and that's unmovable, we then have a compromise to make when we shoot the product

Actually, while the photography is a bit substandard, because they have a homogeneous feel across the site and the overall look of the whole site is reasonably good and fairly trendy, people are likely to buy. Overall they are probably punching over their weight

The alternative for them is to redesign the site to a different colour scheme, re-shoot everything (including all of the watches that probably had the images supplied by a third party on a white background)

I recently shot jewellery for a site, and they cleverly managed to use 3 variations - white + colourful lifestyle in the main site, black in the pop up. However this you can only pull of if you decide to do it across the board, and often the retrospective legacy of products and images is so large it starts steering the subsequent creative decisions
 
GR3Z said:
I'm using around f16/f18 it varies depending on the size of the subject otherwise it's not all in focus, but worry if I move the SB to far away it just won't have the power at high apertures
Click to expand...

Try focus stacking images shot using the best range of your lens. I'd think f/18 and you're likely to be starting to get diffraction and hence softness. There are programs that automate this like helical focus.
 
GR3Z said:
That's where I must be going wrong as every shot had the reflection of the soft box in, covering the the whole lot, so I just adjusted the blacks in PP, I'd find it difficult to not get the reflection to be honest I'd have to have the large softbox some distance away to achieve this what sort of aperture would recommend I'm using around f16/f18 it varies depending on the size of the subject otherwise it's not all in focus, but worry if I move the SB to far away it just won't have the power at high apertures
Click to expand...
I don't think you should be getting the softbox far away. It's job is to light evenly (as far as I understand). With the modelling light on, move your head up and down - you will see the reflection of the softbox move as you move up and down. You need to place the camera so it is not in the line of reflection - or move the softbox such that the reflections are not in the line of where you want the camera. You may be surprised and you probably want the softbox as close as you can get it without being in the picture (I think Garry said that in an earlier reply).

I wouldn't worry about diffraction softening. You're going to shrink these images for web use so you'll have resampled any diffraction effects out of the picture by the time you get them web sized.
 
Bennp2000 said:
Try focus stacking images shot using the best range of your lens.
Click to expand...
Crikey... focus stacking and product photography sounds like a recipie for hours post processing at the computer. If you are doing any reasonable number, the thing you want to minimise is post time... Get a setup that works to get it right in camera (IMHO of course ;))
 
You can try moving the softbox to camera right a bit more to avoid it reflecting in the perspex. Also, not sure if you are using one already but try a polarising filter, this way you can adjust how much reflection you get. As the shots are for a website and presumably will be fairly small you can afford to pull the camera back to achieve deeper DOF and then just crop into the image.
 
Hi Graeme,

this was a great thread with all the input and results you have had. Very educational and inspirational. Now, where do I get the acrylic sheet?

Malcolm
 
A4 sheets of black acrylic are cheap to buy off of Ebay but scratch very very easily. Try to get a cheap black glass coffee table from Argos or somewhere, you'll get two sheets of glass that will be much more resistant to scratches and in the long run will work out much cheaper.
 
Yes on transparent glass but not on black glass that has the back coated.
 
Thanks Paul,

good thought! Where are you in Cornwall?
 
I lived at Newquay 50 yeas ago and started a Cafe in Fore Street, which is still going.

Used to be a fantastic place at Redruth to do with Iron Ore Tin Streaming. I made a film of that many years ago and if still there, would make an excellent location for a shoot.
 
He probably know some of the people I grew up with, depending on how old he is now. I went to Tretheris school, also to Cambourne Technical College near Redruth - now the Cornwall Univerity or something like that. He would probably have know the Hubbers veg and fruit shop in Central Square and Mathews Pasties - the very est you could buy. The cafe I started after leaving college was opposite the car park above the bowling green in Fore Street, know as the Cottage Cafe.
 
GR3Z said:
That's where I must be going wrong as every shot had the reflection of the soft box in, covering the the whole lot, so I just adjusted the blacks in PP, I'd find it difficult to not get the reflection to be honest I'd have to have the large softbox some distance away to achieve this what sort of aperture would recommend I'm using around f16/f18 it varies depending on the size of the subject otherwise it's not all in focus, but worry if I move the SB to far away it just won't have the power at high apertures
Click to expand...
This is a lighting problem, pure and simple, and it needs to be tackled as such - don't go off at a tangent!

Don't move the softbox further away, it won't help, in fact it will make matters worse. Just play with the angle until you lose that reflection. It can be done, I do it every day...

Don't adjust the blacks, get it right in the camera. Adjusting the blacks is adding to your problem, not curing it.

I'm going to sound like a dinosaur here (and maybe I am) but people starting out would be much better off shooting on film than digital, and not using a computer to 'cure' faults that are caused by lack of knowledge and lack of care. For now, forget about 'improving' your shots on computer because you're not improving them, you're rescuing them!

As I said, just angle the softbox so that you don't get the reflection.
Then position your key light (in your case the hotshoe flash) until you're getting the effect you want.
Then adjust the exposure between the two lights until it looks right
Then add the reflector, and position it to give the effect you want. Moving it forwards or backwards just a little bit will make a huge difference.
Place both your camera and your lighting where it does the best job, not where it's easiest for you.
Job done.

In theory, you shouldn't stop down beyond f/11 on your cropped frame camera, because at f/16 diffraction limitation (and yes, it's diffraction limitation not diffraction) begins to kick in an you will have SOME loss of overall sharpness. But it's more important to get enough depth of field and at the very small file enlargements we're talking about here, it's better to have a bit of diffraction limitation than to have part of your subject out of focus. Diffraction limitation isn't a line in the sand that you mustn't cross, it just gradually gets worse as the effective aperture gets smaller. Focus stacking is a bodge that can be useful, but it's not needed here
 
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