Anyone who has ever tried to create professional-looking images from photographing jewelry has undoubtedly found it to be a little more challenging than other types of photography for the following reasons:

• Since most jewelry is highly reflective, the lighting, size and placement of the piece are all crucial.
• For traditional camera to render the details of small jewelry effectively, special -yet costly- lenses are needed (below, you will see how Olympus has changed all that).
• Until recently, the cost of purchasing camera and lighting equipment, coupled with the lack of knowledge in how to photograph jewelry has prevented most people from doing it themselves.

However, tremendous improvements have taken place in both the price and performance of digital cameras. These improvements, combined with affordable lighting equipment and basic knowledge of how to use it (and the camera) no longer makes this process exclusive to specialists.

This lesson demonstrates some simple, effective techniques to photographing jewelry that is invaluable to small business owners, as well as to people selling jewelry and other products in on-line auctions.

(Click on any image below for an enlarged view.)

To set up this shoot, we contacted a local jeweler, explained that we wanted to make a lesson on how to photograph jewelry, and asked him to loan us a few rings for the shoot. He not only agreed, he came to the studio to watch because he couldn't believe that it was as easy to do as we described.

Once we were in the studio, we first mounted an Olympus C-4040 Zoom digital camera to a tripod and powered it up. We set the shooting mode to Manual so that we could control our depth of field. To ensure that you have the greatest depth of field and that the jewelry will be in sharp focus from front to back, set the camera to its smallest aperture setting. In this case, we set it to f/10 (for a more in depth look at Depth Of Field, check out the lesson on this CD entitled, "Controlling Depth Of Field in Product Photography").

Then, we set the White Balance to match the color temperature of the Tungsten lights, or 3200 degrees Kelvin (for a more in depth look at White Balance, check out the lesson on this CD entitled, "How To Set Your White Balance Indoors").

Next, we set up a homemade shooting table and attached a roll of white seamless paper to it. (For a look on how to create your own shooting table, visit www.webphotoschool.com and sign up for access to the Private Lessons.) We then set up two Photoflex Medium Starlite Kits and positioned them on either side of the table. Finally, we cleaned and polished the rings and placed them on a small table near the set (figure 1).

First, we placed a group of three rings held by cloth finger displays on the set. When lighting jewelry, a general rule of thumb is to surround the pieces with broad, soft light sources to render even reflections all around. To demonstrate, we positioned the left Starlite Kit close to the rings at a 45- degree angle. Bringing the face of the soft box closer to a reflective object increases its area of reflection. It is therefore advantageous to bring the light source in as close as possible. We took a shot, and the LCD on the camera displayed the captured image to confirm we had the correct exposure (figures 2 & 3).

With just one light, the group shot had a little too much contrast, and the color from the stones and gold were slightly washed out. To improve the lighting, I moved the soft box slightly forward (toward the background) and brought in the other Starlite Kit to the same angle and took another shot (figures 4 & 5).

Notice how the tonality of the result is now more evenly balanced while still maintaining a sense of dimension, and how the colors of the stones and gold are much more apparent. The finger displays worked well for the group shot, but next we wanted to show how to shoot a single ring up close. Laying the ring flat would minimize our lighting control, so instead we decided to prop it up with what many photographers call "ghee". Not to be confused with clarified butter, ghee is a mixture of kneaded eraser and modeling clay. Mixing the two by hand allows you to create your own consistency between malleability and stickiness (figure 6).

Once the ring was in place, we zoomed all the way out on the camera and came in as close as we could before losing focus. We took a shot and as you can see from the crop, it wasn't very close (figure 7).

Fortunately, this Olympus camera is designed to fit a relatively inexpensive optional Macro Lens Attachment, which is exactly what we decided to use next. We attached the lens and brought the camera in closer to the ring (figures 8 & 9).

We then zoomed all the way out, focused on the stones of the ring and took a shot with the same camera settings. The frame is now filled with the images of the ring and even the texture of the platinum is present (figure 10).

We shot several rings that day that a jeweler could use to either post to their website or make prints for in-store sale specials. To demonstrate how easy it is to print up weekly or monthly "Sale" prints to more effectively market merchandise, we decided to produce a sample counter-card using Adobe Photoshop Elements and an inkjet printer.

We removed the SmartMedia card from the camera and transferred the images to the computer via the Olympus SmartMedia card reader (figures 11 & 12).

We opened up the image of the blue ring in Adobe Photoshop Elements, and created a new window to serve as our layout page that was 8.5x11" at 300ppi by selecting "New" from the File menu (figure 13).

We selected the Move tool from the Toolbox, and clicked and dragged the image of the ring into the new window (figure 14).

Next, we decided to add a variety of type to the new image. We set our foreground color to what we wanted the type to be, clicked on the image, and started typing. To set the type in its own layer, we simply pressed the Enter key. Thanks to the type menu bar that appeared when type was active, editing the font size, style and color was easy and very similar to most word processing applications (figure 15).

Once the layout was set, we chose File>Print. This brought up the Print dialog box where we could choose the number of copies we wanted to print, the resolution and the type of paper on which to print. To achieve maximum clarity in the ring, we set the resolution to its highest (2880dpi) and chose to print on Pictorico's Premium Glossy Photo Paper (figure 16).

We hit the Print button and within five minutes, we had a simple, elegant sale announcement that could be inserted into a clear display holder to be placed on any counter in your showroom (figure 17).

There are many photographers who absolutely dread the thought of shooting jewelry because, as we've mentioned in the lesson above, it is often highly reflective, very small in size, and can be difficult to work with in creating a composition.

But again, anyone armed with a few basic lighting tools and a rudimentary understanding of camera and lighting methods can truly work wonders. This lesson runs through some lighting techniques that are a little more advanced then the first lesson, yet that are very simple to follow.

(Click on any image below for an enlarged view.)

For a modern jewelry look, we decided to shoot these tension rings against a sheet of brushed aluminum. We picked out two different sizes and secured them upright on gray ring stands. We placed the smaller one in front so that it would appear similar in size to the rear one from the point of view of the camera (figures 18 & 19).

Since we were shooting on a curved shooting table, we had to shim the front stand with a piece of foam core to keep the surface level (figure 20).

Next, we set up our first light source, a Photoflex Small Starlite Kit. We attached the SilverDome soft box to the Starlite head and secured the head to a Photoflex Boom, mounted on a Photoflex Boom Stand. Then we positioned it over the set to illuminate the tops of the rings and aluminum (figure 21).

(Notice in figure 4 how we propped up the sheet of aluminum by clamping a Photoflex Litedisc Holder to the edges and securing it to a LiteStand.)

We mounted an Olympus E-10 digital camera to a tripod and zoomed all the way out on the lens to keep the rings proportionally sized to each other. We set the aperture down to f/11 to maintain a large depth of field, set the shutter speed to 1/30th of a second and took a shot (figure 22).

Looking at the image playback on the LCD of the camera, we realized that we needed to be able to come in closer. Fortunately, Olympus makes an optional macro lens attachment for the E-10 for situations like this. We attached the lens, came in a little tighter, and took another shot (figures 23 & 24).

In this result shot, notice how the attachment lens helped our composition by minimizing the relative size difference between the rings. Even though the light from the overhead soft box had lit the top and bottom of the rings nicely, the sides of the rings appeared dark and flat.

To add a sense of dimension to the shot, we set up another Small Starlite kit, positioned it off to the left hand side and took another shot (figures 25 & 26).

The result shot shows a big improvement. The transition between light and dark is smooth, and interesting shapes are formed by the addition of this second soft box.

Next, we decided to add another Starlite Kit to the right side to balance the reflections of the ring. Without changing the camera settings, we took another shot (figures 27 & 28).

Although this third light source filled in the dark areas and balanced the reflections, it still maintained a good contrast level to the shot and a sense of dimension to the rings.

The addition of both side lights, however, brightened the background considerably. To keep the light solely on the rings, we attached grids to each of the side soft boxes, and took another shot (figures 29 & 30).

Notice how the background has darkened, and yet the light and reflections on the rings have not changed (figure 31).

Next, we wanted to brighten up the diamond a little, but keep everything else the same. We set up a Dedolight focusing light on a small Litestand, turned off the Starlites, and focused the light so that it only hit the diamond and the adjoining parts of the ring. This helped to draw more attention to the diamond. We turned the Starlites back on and took another shot (figure 32 & 33).

Reviewing the shot on the LCD, we noticed that the tone of the rear ring was a little too close to that of the background. To create more separation, we decided to cut the light hitting the aluminum even more by placing a set of Louvers on the face of the overhead soft box. Once these were in place, we took another shot (figures 34 & 35).

The result shot shows a significant difference in contrast and overall feel to the shot, as the rings now pop forward from the background.

Finally, we decided to experiment with the amount of focus on the rear ring. We wanted it to be recognizable, but not so much that it would draw attention away from the front ring. We opened the aperture up to f/2.4, adjusted the shutter speed to accommodate for the correct exposure and took a shot (figures 36 & 37).

The result shows that f/2.4 made the rear ring so soft as to be almost unrecognizable. We split the difference and set the aperture to f/4.5, adjusted the shutter speed, and took one last shot (figure 38).

After the shoot, we opened the final image in Adobe Photoshop Elements and used the Rubber Stamp tool to erase the metal clips that held up the rings. We also boosted the contrast a little to make the background appear even farther away (figure 39).