|
Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
09-11-2012, 05:28 PM
|
| |
Photographing jewelry is something I do on a regular basis with one of my long standing customers. Lighting is key, as is just the right amount of depth of field. Unfortunately, when shooting close with jewelry, you'll often have a very shallow depth of field. This can be overcome two different ways. You can use the focus stacking method to make a composite of multiple images at slight different focus points or you can use a tilt (tilt shift lens) to manipulate the plane of focus. Unfortunately, Pentax doesn't produce a tilt shift lens, and there isn't really an alternative. Your 90mm macro will probably be sufficient if you're careful about placement of your focus and stop down considerably.
My lighting set-up is quite simple, but very effective in my opinion. I will often use a light tent (can be found on eBay) for light diffusion. The lights consist of 4 Home Depot work lights and daytime bulbs, with one or two flashes triggered off camera. My particular client requires a perfectly white background, so I frequently fire one of the flashes through a piece of acrylic to light the jewelry from below or behind. I will still typically have to adjust the white point (not white balance) after the fact in Photoshop to get the 'true' white background.
Here is a recent example shot with 5DII and 90mm TS-E.
BTW - definitely use a custom white balance on these shots. A gray card can make this very reliable and easy. Any questions, just ask!
|
