How would you light these?







Any other critique or advice to make the shots better will be much appreciated.

The technique typically used for jewelry can be described generically as a "tent" approach.

Suspend the object in mid-air or on glass, surround by white (creating uniform reflection seen on the object) then use black "flags" to block the reflections to create the illusion of shadow. The lighting is aimed at the white surround, not directly at the object.


Google "Photographing Jewelry" and you'll find a few tutorials and links to equipment suppliers.

Chuck

Thanks Chuck.

I have been wanting to get a shooting tent for sometime. The above were done with improvised "tent", 2 large white corrugated plastic board from handicraft store serving as reflector surrounding the subject.

Other than the tent, I'm just wondering if there is a better approach. An alternative I can think of is multiple softboxes and a shooting table.

Part of the problem perceptually is the high contrast with the dark background. You might want to try a light-to-medium gray; a tone dark enough to allow the white objects to contrast, light enough to reveal the shape of the dark objects or shadow tones on the reflective ones, but not so stark a contrast. The advantage of a shooting table is to being able to light the background underneath the objects separately. You can start with white and make it various shades of gray with the lighting.

Large SB surrounding the object will have the same effect as a tent if used close enough for the reflection of the source to be seen uniformly on the object. Hanging rip-stop white nylon or making some DIY scrim panels with it an PVC pipe with a light behind it is also a cheap way to create a large enough source for larger objects.

In a small room with white walls you can just bounce the lights indirectly off the walls and ceiling to create a uniform "overcast" lighting effect. The V shaped corner of a room is ideal for that. You just need to pay attention to stuff in the room like you and the camera being visible in the reflections and drape the distractions with white or black to hide them. Also do Custom WB off a gray card to compensate for any color shift caused by the wall color.

Chuck

If you are shooting a lot of items like this for something like ebay then a shooting tent is a easy option. If OTOH you want good lighting on the different surfaces you would need to create specular high lights in certain areas to make the jewelry sparkle and give it some life. This is usally done with little mirrors or small silver (or gold) cards. Easy to do in PS id you are ok using layers and combining images. You can light up different sections as needed. Just using a large light source will give you enough light but not very nice light. My former instructor called it "wastebasket lighting" because: 1. You could make a nice little stage using a white plastic wastebasket, and 2. He had a low opinion of it as a technique.

I have read about using point light source to create the reflection in the gem cut. Of course placement of such light source would need to be very precise. It seems that it's supposed to be done with continuous lighting to determine the effect. I don't have a continuous lighting setup, what I did is merely to point a hotshoe flash unit, which is literally a shooting in the dark, without much luck of course.

Yes, not having access to the right equipment makes thing difficult especially with things like jewelry. Might as well go with a light tent...maybe you can add some highlights in PS?

One large soft box.

For detail lighting you did pretty good, although I personally would have gone with a lighter background.

Dramatic lighting is a lot more difficult. That would involve a light table, spot lights, reflector cards, flags, dulling spray... And maybe, or maybe not, a softbox. The best way to learn how is to find someone who does a lot of that kind of work, not me, and watch what he does. Can it be reduced to a formula? Probably, if you do not mind all your shots looking the same.

Get it off the background. Suspending jewelry like the necklaces can be a real pain (fishing line, booms and 'beading wire' from a craft store help), but seperation from the background would help them immensly. It will also help the light wrap and not pull all of that black up into the jewelry itself.
Put your black background far enough back that your foreground lights don't spill over onto it to achieve a richer looking black and use a wide enough aperture to let the back ground go out of focus a bit.
I'll typically use 3 or 4 strobes on a shot like this and several white cards positioned around the piece. I almost always also 'shoot through' a piece of white card with hole big enough for the lense to fit through to remove the black of the camera.

Thanks guys for all your inputs.

Unfortunately I don't have anyone that I can learn from.

A few questions:

- How would you suspend a neckalce? If I were to suspend it on 2 points with fishing line, it would assume an inverted triangular shape. I imagine it might work for some design but definitely not all of them. Another way I could think of is to keep the horizontal part of the chain on top out of the frame.

- How do I position the reflectors card? And how many?

- For the shoot through white card, how big does it need to be? Or the bigger the merrier? Which essentially works like a shooting tent. Of course this also depends on the distance of the camera to the subject.

I am going to give another shot later, I hope I could put these points to practice.

if you are not in a hurry, go buy this book

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Science-Introduction-Photographic-Lighting/dp/0240808193/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257787004&sr=8-2

it has a lot of good information, about how to photograph shiny things!

+1 on the book recommendation

<Chas>