Tube Setting and Box Clasp
So some of you may have seen me mention that I make Jewellery, this has been a bit of a tricky thing to show to people for me online generally because photographing Jewellery can be so annoying because of how small it is. Adding to that, it's quite specialised so you have to have the right lighting set up in order to catch the light properly and then mess with the digital camera settings.
I'm almost there with the photography I think, but I think what i'm missing is a really bright light because the ones that I have now don't seem to be doing the job, hopefully though it's not too dark for you to see, let me know.
This is a tube setting I did as a present for someone I know it's not easy to show as the gemstones are set at opposite points but there are actually two stones in this tube setting, one at either end. They are two pink rhodalite garnet stones, very small but I wanted to do something fairly simple as I had a much bigger project I had just finished which I will show you next.
This is what I've decided will be one of my major showcase pieces, it's a box clasp bracelet, unfortunately I ended up accidentally popping my lightbulb somehow on one of the lights so it's not bright enough to show you the full thing definitely need to look at getting a good quality light source for my photography but I managed to take some decent close up photographs of all the other parts of the bracelet. As you can see it actually clicks together using the tongue which slides into the enclosure that then clicks into place. It took a hell of a lot of work to make this piece not something I'd do cheaply or every day because of how technical it is, I quite liked doing it as a challenge even though it was a relief to finally get it done.
Box Clasp when put together
Tongue
Enclosure
leaf pattern sheets, they're the main part of the bracelet, the rest just clips it all together
I noticed there were quite a few photographers here on Steemit, if you guys have a particular light you'd recommend for Jewellery please let me know, I clearly need quite a strong bright white light, the lighting changes absolutely everything in Jewellery photography.
I like using natural daylight for jewellery, mirrored to an angle that brings out relief you want, and filtered through white paper or similar to prevent too much glare. Colour temperature is critical for precious metals, so I usually sneak in a piece of "known white" material in the corner of the shot to set the colour temperature.
I'm not a professional jewellery photographer though, YMMV.
It's difficult getting that though normally especially if you don't have a professional setup and it's winter like it is now :P the best option I think would be just to get a really powerful light with a white bulb and blast it. A bit crude yes, but I expect it would have the best effect. I actually got this by blasting two lights at it but I think they were quite small and that's why the light wasn't picked up so well by the camera.
It's actually in a light box already, so this is leading me to believe it must be a lighting issue that's causing the dullness and shadows.
Avoid LED and fluorescent lighting, their spectrum isn't complete enough to do precious metals justice, in my experience. Incandescent light bulbs are usually a bit on the red side, but that can be corrected in PhotoShop to some extent. Paper can make the light diffuse to avoid glare.
Okay, I'm glancing at tutorials every now and then on photography and they all seem to recommend continuous lighting, doesn't look hugely expensive so it might be something to save up for so I have a proper lighting setup.
Thanks guys! This is my first post that I've received more than 100 upvotes for.