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06-05-2009, 01:42 AM   #1
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high-key jewelry look

We're starting up a small online jewelry business. I've been doing the product photography myself and I'm looking for some advice.

What you see in the photos below is a silver-and-zircon mockup of one of our products. We want to have the products displayed on a white background, and have figured out a way of doing it (lots of light!). In the brightest lit environment, however, we've found that the stone tends to fade to an undistinguished white block.

So I've been shooting with the lighting set to make a grey background (first photo) and then delete the background in photoshop.

Does the second image work? Are there any techniques that I should pursue to improve this?

Thanks in advance!





06-05-2009, 05:55 AM   #2
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It is all about proportions of lighting. If you increase the light directed at your background, you can whiten up the background without post processing. Most people achieve this with a flash directed at the background in a lightbox, or whatever you can imagine to increase the lighting on the background while keeping the foreground light where you like it. I think this will keep a more natural image. There are tons of guides on product photography on the internet for all the ebayers out there
06-05-2009, 06:33 AM   #3
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This kind of thing is best done by making the product float in a pool of light. The easiest way to do this is to backlight a sheet of white sign plastic that the product is sitting on.
If you want to add sparkle to the jewelry, try crumpling up some aluminium foil, flattening it back out somewhat and lining umbrellas with it.
Some experimentation is required.
The nice thing about using sign plastic as a sweep is that you can use little bits of plastitack to hold the product at the right angle and not have stains on the background, which will happen eventually with paper, and you can dress up shots by using coloured gels on the background light to turn the pool of light different colours.
06-05-2009, 06:40 AM   #4
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Southy is correct, rather than increasing the light of the entire scene, which blows out the stone making it indistinguishable, find a white backdrop and point lights only at the backdrop so that you can blow out the background while keeping the ring properly exposed. I don't know what kind of lights you are using so you will need to play around with power settings to figure out what works best.

I've done high key studio shots and the lighting set up we use is three lights. One key light high camera right and in front of the subject shot through an umbrella, a reflector camera left for fill. Then two lights positioned on both sides behind the subject pointed at the backdrop.

You can see an example of our setup in this video we made:

at around the 0:30-0:31 mark you can see it.

Of course this is for shooting people so you might not need such big lights, but the principle is pretty much the same.

06-05-2009, 06:21 PM   #5
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Thanks for the helpful responses, everyone. The idea of a separate light for the background (translucent white plastic -- acrylic?) is a good one. I'll hunt around for some tutorials online as well. Meanwhile, I'm also exploring some options in post-processing. I like retaining a bit of the natural background, as opposed to simply cutting it all out, because it gives the piece a more natural look.

Here's a rough cut of what I mean.

06-05-2009, 07:41 PM   #6
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The second shot is better imo, but I would like to see it from a different angle, see more of the top of the ring, more of the diamond.
06-05-2009, 08:51 PM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by uccemebug Quote
Thanks for the helpful responses, everyone. The idea of a separate light for the background (translucent white plastic -- acrylic?) is a good one.
Whatever sign plastic is made of. Really, just go to a commercial sign place and get as small a piece as you can bend into a sweep.
If you are ambitious, I bet you could figure a way to heat it up enough to form it into an arc.
The light goes below/behind the sweep, and so shines through it towards the lens of the camera. The farther the light is from the sweep, the less of a hot spot there will be, but there isn't much point in losing any light to spill over unless you need some spill to redirect to reflectors.
You can actually do this kind of product photography with one light and reflectors, though you can't colour the light if you only have one.
A couple of umbrellas or softboxes (preferable, as they won't show ribs like umbrellas) coming in from ~75º on either side makes a really easy to control setup. You can either add a tinfoil filled umbrella somewhere to give it a bit of zing, or replace one or more of the softboxes to really make it pop.
Or something.

06-05-2009, 10:52 PM   #8
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QuoteOriginally posted by Thesorus Quote
The second shot is better imo, but I would like to see it from a different angle, see more of the top of the ring, more of the diamond.
Each of the rings is shot from five different views. This is the simplest, used for illustrating the issue. Thanks for the feedback.
06-05-2009, 11:01 PM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by Wheatfield Quote
Whatever sign plastic is made of. Really, just go to a commercial sign place and get as small a piece as you can bend into a sweep.
If you are ambitious, I bet you could figure a way to heat it up enough to form it into an arc.
The light goes below/behind the sweep, and so shines through it towards the lens of the camera. The farther the light is from the sweep, the less of a hot spot there will be, but there isn't much point in losing any light to spill over unless you need some spill to redirect to reflectors.
You can actually do this kind of product photography with one light and reflectors, though you can't colour the light if you only have one.
A couple of umbrellas or softboxes (preferable, as they won't show ribs like umbrellas) coming in from ~75º on either side makes a really easy to control setup. You can either add a tinfoil filled umbrella somewhere to give it a bit of zing, or replace one or more of the softboxes to really make it pop.
Or something.
I meant to say that we are using such an acrylic background. Our is flat, though. Having it curved wasn't something I'd considered!

Currently that acrylic base is underlit with a single fluorescent bulb. I have the base mounted in a frame around which I've wrapped tracing paper to control reflections. I find it works fairly well, eliminating some of the seams from the larger foldable enclosures they sell -- I've noticed those seams even in the reflections in the settings on the Tiffany website. I've got a small hole cut in the tracing paper for the lens (about 40% of the diameter of the lens, a SMC 50mm mounted on macro adapters). I use two additional small fluorescent bulbs for the setting, and a small LED penlight which I use to highlight the stone.

From what I've read in this thread, I'm going to explore the use of another bulb that's only used for illuminating the background, but I still can't see how making a very bright background won't cause a loss of contrast in the stone. I don't want to get into photoshopping in a stone from a second frame....
06-06-2009, 12:01 AM   #10
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The diamond looks a little lackluster. Can you try a light from directly above to make the stone glow a bit?

You might want to re-consider the angle of the camera too. Many of the diamond ring photos I have seen are shot looking down on an angle.
06-06-2009, 06:27 PM   #11
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Here is a link that I found helpful when shooting this kinda stuff:

Studio

And this one to make your own lightbox:
lightbox
06-06-2009, 11:56 PM   #12
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scanner photography, scanography, works excellent for jewelry.
06-07-2009, 09:16 AM   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by Donald Quote
scanner photography, scanography, works excellent for jewelry.
My brother is the Comptroller for Fifth Avenue Collections (a costume jewelry company). This was exactly what they were doing for the longest time. Someone then had the idea of buying a CD of headshots and Photoshopping the jewelry scans onto the stock photos.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but the jewelry itself always looked good.
To make the diamonds sparkle in a regular camera set-up, use one umbrella lined with crumpled and flattened tinfoil instead of a softbox. you'll be amazed at what it does to gem stones.
06-07-2009, 09:21 PM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by mi2nc Quote
Here is a link that I found helpful when shooting this kinda stuff:

Studio

And this one to make your own lightbox:
lightbox
Yes, I'd found that site myself. I like some of the tricks like using a piece of black paper to add reflections -- and here I was taking such pains to remove all reflections!
06-07-2009, 09:26 PM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by Wheatfield Quote
My brother is the Comptroller for Fifth Avenue Collections (a costume jewelry company). This was exactly what they were doing for the longest time. Someone then had the idea of buying a CD of headshots and Photoshopping the jewelry scans onto the stock photos.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but the jewelry itself always looked good.
To make the diamonds sparkle in a regular camera set-up, use one umbrella lined with crumpled and flattened tinfoil instead of a softbox. you'll be amazed at what it does to gem stones.
So actually setting the piece in a flatbed scanner? I've often found that scanner-imaged three-dimension objects had a strong three-d look ... that might well work very nicely.

I'll try the tinfoil trick, too.

Thanks, everyone, for your continued suggestions.
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