posted on January 5, 2002 07:40:29 PM new
Hi,
Hope everyone had good and happy new year.
Few months ago I saw a post about how to take pictures of jewerly,
I cannt find it anymore, so if you have a moment, please drop me a line of advice.
I have a diamond ring that I have been trying to take pictures of for 2 days now.
Gold band, white gold setting, singe stone,
4 prongs, and a small decorative line
From the middle (sides from the stone) to the sides of the band.
I managed to take pic of it but it looks blury and you cannt tell the stone apart from the white gold setting.
I used natural light, flash, no flash, fluoresent light, black and white behind
And I have Olympus Camedia 3000 C digital camera 3.Some milion pixels per inch,
Each time when I zoom in closer the pictures are out of focus and blury.
I bought a huge loupe, - didnt work,
Now I have a "reading helper"
About 10 inch large loupe with built in fluoresent light and I still cannt get it right. For some reason my camera needs to be atleast 7 inches away from the object.
(that's what the manual says)
When I get any closer I loose focus and the ring just becomes one big yellow ball....
Just for fun I took a pic of yellow gold bracelet and that came out great, you can even see small scratches in the gold, so the diamond and the white gold are the only ones giving me trouble.
Any ideas? I promise I wont use your tricks,
I only sold one of my bracelets so far and I'm done with jewerly after this ring
Oh the stone is 41 points, mens ring.
Thank you
Regards
Laiki
posted on January 6, 2002 12:10:05 AM new
The same thing happend to me with my 35 MM Minolta. I have a friend who is a photographer who got an adaptor to use with my regular lense. That's all it took! Now I can take close ups of jewelry, tags, etc
posted on January 6, 2002 04:17:43 AM new
Are you using a tripod when using the zoom feature? when you push the shutter button your hand moves the camera ever so slightly, which causes close up or zoom pics to blur. using a tripod works wonders for me in this area. JMHO
posted on January 6, 2002 11:01:18 AM new
Thanks for the replies,
I'll try to scan it,
If I set the settings on black and white
Will the colors shows? (sorry, never tried scaning anything else but paper)
I tried it both with and without tripod,
With it the pics actualy looked worst...
Paloma91,
Do you know what kind of adaptor it is?
I never heard of that, but I'll try anything
I had no idea how hard it is to take pics of jewerly, each time when I look at listings on eBay the pictures are gorgeous (well,
At least most of them, some look worst then mine, which makes me feel little bit better )
With the loupe I was able to get a good picture of the ring, but I need a close up,
And that's the part that's hard.
posted on January 6, 2002 11:51:55 AM new
i have a sony mavica which does closeup under macro,if i get too too close,the picture is blurr.'
did you clean your lens??
scanning will give you closeup details,when you set it to black and white,you get no color.
last resort,take picture with a regular camera and develop it and then scan the photo.
you may need to ask the professional photographer to take a good photo,,the ones that you see in catalog,they are taken with expensive camera with very powerful lighting and by professionals.
posted on January 6, 2002 12:03:45 PM new
When I had one up for auction I scanned it. I had it in the box. I opened the box and put the box on the scanner so that the diamond was about1 inch from the glass. I hope you can figure out how I did it. It turned out really nice. I was selling it for my sister-in-law and I did have the bids but with the appraisal the buyer took it to her jeweler and he said not to buy it.
posted on January 6, 2002 06:33:21 PM new
When I was using the tripod
I was standing above it,
With the huge loupe
I tried from side, top, bottom,
I turned the box (tried it in a ring box and without) to all sides and so....
I thought about taking pics with normal
Camera, i'll have to find it first,
Ever since I got the digital one I havent used it since
Libra63, I think I got it, I'll try the scaner, sorry about the buyer,
Hopefuly if I get one, he/she will keep it
Regards
Laiki
posted on January 6, 2002 11:11:11 PM new
STOPWHINING AND LIBRA63:
Thank you Thank you Thank you SOOOOO
Much for the scaner idea!
It worked fabulous, I have them in color,
I was able to crop out white spaces and
I have the best detail ever (even in a box,
Scaned upside down
The detail is so great that you can see
My finger print on the yellow gold band !
If I knew how to post pics here I would show you
Off to scan all of the stuff I wanted to show to my family
Why noone told me before?
I have 1000 % perfect pictures now
I always only used scaner for papers,
I think I'll be the "scaning demon" now
Have a wonderful evening / morning
And thank you to all.
Best regards
Laiki
Laiochka
posted on January 7, 2002 02:50:22 PM new
Jewelry is highly reflective and areas that aren't lit go black. You need to light front, top, bottom and all sides with either a light or a reflector board. Pros use a technique to do this called tenting. The technique is pretty simple and described in any good photo book.
If you do a lot of jewelry, it's easy to make a little rig with translucent plexiglas to make superb pix with a minimal amount of equipment.
posted on January 7, 2002 04:09:01 PM new
Hello
Yes try scanner. I use a nice purple towel and scan in color usally at 150% for small items and they usally come out wonderful. Your flatbed will do a lot if you just hack around. Dave
posted on January 10, 2002 07:13:16 PM new
Hi,
Thanks again to all,
I tried every recomendation
And for the jewelry that I have
(I normaly sell lingerie,
This is a one time thing)
It worked out fabulously.
I always had a good light,
But the detail was the problem,
Scanner gave me the best quality pictures and fantastic detail.
I had the ring in a box,
(which allowed me get even better detail
Since there is no good way to hold the ring
In any possition when it's being scanned)
And the box is lined in deep bordeaux
Velvet like material so I even had a nice "backround" (after cropping the pics you cannt see the whole box)
And it gave it a nice off set color
And made the white gold and diamond
"pop out" more.
So after 3 days of fighting with the camera
I had no good pics I could use and after 20 min of scanning I had THE best pictures.
Thank you again
Best regards
Laiki
posted on January 11, 2002 12:52:31 AM new
I don't have any secrets, all I know is it takes me up to 45 painful minutes to get the right pic for certain jewelry. I adjust for angles and lighting. Sometimes the pic looks like a pro except I don't bring out the true colors, and bringing out the true colors I lose details. A professional lens and equipment looks like the ideal investment if you're doing enogh sales to justify a purchase.
