Take Better Digital Jewelry Photography

1) Use a tripod

I well made and balanced tripod is an investment. Spend as much as you can, the Oben line found at B&HPhoto are affiliate partner has complete collection of all the major brands of tripods. They carry every type of tripod and accessory. One that I found very interesting is with an arm that goes completely over the set if needed is the Oben line. It has to be rock solid, if you find that you have to tighten down the locks too much you tripod is not for the camera. Snug and it should lock.

2) Focus your camera

In order to ensure your images are sharp, make sure you know how to focus your camera make sure it’s on manual focus thus giving you the sweet spot to focus on. You don’t want the servo motors trying to focus on it thinks is the important part. Once you have composed the image the lighting begins.

3) Put your camera in manual mode

Manuel mode allows you too pick the aperture and speed depending on what you’re shooting. Shoot in Raw not Jpeg. You want to have all the color information a raw file can give you. Afterwards in post you can make the adjustment. I use Lightroom for all my post correction

4) Use soft lighting

You never want to use the cameras on camera flash. This gives a harsh light with shadows, no contrast. Yoou can use a cube or a softbak to bring on top and from the sides you can use reflector cars to bring out small details. EZcube, Cubelite, or use a soft box.

5) Use image editing software

The seasoned pro uses Photoshop, the workforce for the industry, most of the post production can be done in Lightroom then all applied changes and exported as a tiff or jpeg (although I don’t recommend using jpeg’s)

When you see a professional jewelry shot take place there is an enormous amount of time and experience to make the product look like a million bucks as they say.

6) If you are the type to print in-house

For those that have installed a color calibration system you’re ahead of the pack. Once you have your monitor, printer, and paper all in sync your results will be perfect. Giving a client a rock solid calibrated file along with the printout saves them money and you become an added value vendor(although I hate the term vendor)  What are your thoughts?