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Archive 2012 · Jewelry light setup. Silver, mirror like jewelry.

  
 
pentool
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Jewelry light setup. Silver, mirror like jewelry.


hi. can you guys share your jewelry light setup. specially silver, white gold jewelry.
any helpful tips on jewelry photography. like how do you hold the jewelry, background etc. thanks.



Oct 11, 2012 at 03:42 AM
John Skinner
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Jewelry light setup. Silver, mirror like jewelry.


This is a loaded question.

There are SO many ways and reasons to shoot these items. I have been shooting jewelry for well over 20 years, and for the most part, it feeds me.

Jewelry is sometimes shot on people, where as it's all about effect, message, concept and drawing one's eye and attention to IT, the product. So selective focus and gradients work well.

For stand alone pieces, those $25.00 Chinese white light boxes sold on eBay really work great. Depending on what you want to do with final edits, it's pretty easy to extract these pieces out of the frames and place them in any conceptual look your after.

You'll find that placement and being clean (especially on watches) is one of the real issues. Acrylic (clear)(white) bases, silly-puddy, fishing line (easy to edit out), and finally the book by Corey Barker on compositing are, and will be your best friends.



Oct 11, 2012 at 05:01 PM
pentool
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Jewelry light setup. Silver, mirror like jewelry.


thanks. im kind of struggling with creating gradients, just the reflections in general.
flat surface have been easier, but a jewelry such as a reflective silver bracelet with round edges that waves in and out, up and down, giving me trouble.

for example. how did they get the gradients so nice and smooth.
http://www.tiffany.com/Shopping/Item.aspx?fromGrid=1&sku=GRP02374&mcat=&cid=&search_params=s+1-p+1-c+-r+-x+-n+6-ri+-ni+0-t+silver+bracelet&search=1



Oct 12, 2012 at 02:05 AM
DiPace
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Jewelry light setup. Silver, mirror like jewelry.


The first thing you need to do with highly-reflective jewelry is to isolate it. Anything that's near the jewelry is going to be reflected, especially your camera and lights. Using a white lighting tent can be helpful, but can limit your lighting possibilities. Depending on the actual product, a tent may be the best option.

For those gradients, you'll want to start by feathering your lights. Depending on what lights you're using, you can use diffusion panels and grids to angle the lighting in a way that will produce a little falloff. It takes a lot of positioning and trial-and-error to get a lighting setup that will work for each product.

Check out:
Alex Koloskov's Tutorial

In the editing process, you can use the jewelry's "real" gradients to formulate some artificial ones in Photoshop. Anybody who does this kind of image processing is going to have custom gradients to paint over the rough spots.



Oct 12, 2012 at 09:35 PM
John Skinner
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Jewelry light setup. Silver, mirror like jewelry.


I wanted to add one more thing.

Whatever you have decided is the path you'd like to perfect. I would get a large size poster board and using soft metal strips at both top and bottom attach those on the long ends.

Take this board and cut a hole in it dead center. Use whatever you can fashion to hold it in place ( I made a special bracket) and shoot through that. Although I use this for perfume & beverage bottles every time, I find it takes a slew of problem off my plate when shooting larger bracelets , or anything else with a large mirror finish to it. You will be using this board shaped concave towards the items.



Oct 13, 2012 at 01:43 AM





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