How To Take Digital Photographs of Jewelry

Not a photographer, just an artist with a limited budget, Elaine takes all the photographs for the Leeleeko Jewelry website with a digital camera. She has a simple and inexpensive set up which works well for jewelry and other small craft items.

• What You Need
• Instructions

• Turn Those Digital Images Into Slides

What You Need

• Digital Camera (we use a Canon PowerShot SD550)
• 250W blue incandescent photo bulbs (2 of these) Buy these at a photography store.
• Camera Tripod. We bought ours on eBay for under $20
• Brooder Lamps (2 of these). Yes, these are metal lamps with a clamp on the bottom used in chicken coops. We bought them from an online hardware site a few years back. They cost $10 each. They have three things going for them they are cheap, can take a 250W bulb and have a clamp. Photo lamps are better, but a lot more expensive.
• Table
• Velvet cloth - Black works 90% of the time  If your item is very dark it doesn't work so well.
• Tape roller lint brush to clean the velvet. Every little bit of lint will show up.
• Soft box and/or white photo umbrellas - these help reduce the glare on gemstone or glass. We bought these on eBay, under $20 for the box and the same for two umbrellas
• A room which is fairly dark.  As long as the door shuts and there are blinds or curtains on the windows your fine.

Elaine's Instructions

1. Get familiar with your camera.

   • Read the manual, so you know how to change the settings.
   • Use the manual settings on your camera not automatic.
   • Use a tripod, you can not hold the camera steady enough.
   • Use the self-timer function on your camera. This eliminates any jarring when you snap the photograph.
   • Turn the flash off. You will have your photo bulbs for lighting.

2. Set up your work table.

   • Because of limited space our table is actually set up in a shallow closet. Not the best setup but it does have one advantage, the brooder lamps clamp onto the clothes bar in the closet.  You will need to clamp the lamps onto something.  Aim the lamps away from the item you are going to photograph.  Bouncing the light off a white surface so it indirectly lights your item helps to eliminate hot spots in your photos. I used to have a set up in a low ceiling basement and bounced the light off the ceiling. Now I can only aim the lights at the back of the closet doors. Not ideal but it works.
   • Place your soft box on the table. Clean the velvet with the tape lint brush and spread the cloth inside the soft box. Put the item on the velvet.
   • You may have to adjust your lamps to lessen glare on the surface of the object to be photographed. Use the white umbrellas to soften the light even more. Place these between the object and the lamps.
   • Set up your tripod. so that your camera looks down at the object from an angle.

3. Now the fun begins.

   • Shut the door, draw the blinds and turn off any lighting except the photo bulbs.
   • Set your camera to manual. Set the self-timer. Turn off the flash.
   • Depending on how close the camera is to the object you may have to set it to digital macro. If you are not sure take a photo with macro on and one with it off and see which works best.
   • Use the AWB setting for the type of light. If your camera doesn't have AWB use the florescent lighting setting.
   • Set the camera to take a large image. The image can always be cropped and made smaller later on the computer. It can't be made bigger.
   • Now for the exposure setting. Take a series of 3 or 4 shots varying the exposure from -1.3 to +1.3  You can pick the best image later. That's the great thing about digital cameras. You see the results right away and you don't worry about wasting film.

Turn Those Digital Images Into Slides

Elaine started taking digital photographs for juried Arts and Crafts shows which wanted photos or slides. Printing the images is easy, buy some photo paper and print them from your computer. Have your images made into slides by websites like IQ Imaging, just upload your digital images, pay online and they turn them into great slides.