Beginner Jewelry photography first attempt

[kolchris]

Today was my first attempt on jewelry photography. I'm using Canon 700d with Sigma 105mm f2.8 OS.I took a couple photos but not impressed so far.

My lighting setup is two soft box on the sides and one light on the top. I diffused the light from all sides
.
Here 2 photos:

ISO 100 f/16 1/13

ISO 400 f/16 1/125

I don't know if its just me but I see both photos a bit blurry.

I want to make the gemstones and jewelry more shinny more real. For example the jewelry that I took the above photos has the smoky quartz gemstone.


I will appreciate if someone share with me some tips and knowledge on how to take better shots.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Garry Edwards]

The Canon 700D only has a small sensor. Don't use it at f/16 because diffraction limitation will have started to rear it's ugly head, leading to some loss of overall sharpness. Consider f/11 ,to be the normal.minimum.

There's no good reason, for this type of studio shot, to go higher than 100 ISO.

These are just minor points. The main fault here is that your overhead softbox is far too far away, it needs to be so close that it is literally only just out of shot - see my tutorial on creating diffused specular highlights in the Lencarta Learning centre - and the softbox is also angled incorrectly, it basically needs to point towards the camera from above and behind the subject.

Not sure that you need the softboxes from the side at all but if you do then they too need to be much closer.

 

[Phil Maddocks]

Your settings make zero sense for this photograph...

You have a tiny item so only need a small depth of field - Your lens is sharpest around f5.6 which is move than enough

ISO100 - you can already see noise at ISO 400 in your images

shutter speed can be whatever it needs to be for a proper exposure since you have a stationary object.

The light looks very washed out and the focus seems a bit out...are you manually focusing?? if you aren't, you should be..