Help please - photographing diamonds??

SlowSteve

SlowSteve

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Steve
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Hello all.

This is a post on behalf of a friend who is without internet access.

My friend has a husband who is a custom jeweler - he makes on-off rings and such, and has a hefty following of celebs and the like.

My friend is a photographer with a fair amount of experience, but she is struggling badly when it comes to picturing diamonds. They are cut specifically to shine and sparkle, but that plays hell when it comes to taking a photo of them.

She is shooting fairly close up - things like rings, watches etc, and using both macro and normal zoom lenses.

Can anyone offer any advice I can pass on please?
 
They're a nightmare is what I found when I tried to shoot some of the jewellery I bought the other half. I found the best results were with black backgrounds and at least two other sides of the light tent with diffused light through one other side and then a very narrow light source to get the sparkle, I used a Maglite with black tape over the lens and a very small hole in the tape, but I was never very happy with the results. There were some interesting articles on the net but IIRC you do need special gear to get the best results, essentially multiple tiny points light sources such as fibre optics, in the end I decided I wasn't that interested :(
This was an article I found useful
 
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