Photo Tips
We are asked at least once a week how we get such great pictures of our beads. Taking pictures of jewelry and gemstones is not all that difficult with the proper set up.
I use a point and shoot camera, a Canon SX130. I like this camera because it has a manual white balance setting and an aperture setting so I can get the depth without the subject blurring. You can still find these for sale new, second hand, or refurbished online.
I use a photo cube or tent, one of those white tents and daylight florescent lights, one on each side of the photo tent. I got a couple of clamp on light fixtures at Office Depot for this purpose.
I have the aperture setting at 5.6. I then set the white balance using a white typing paper. I then set the camera on a tripod and always use the macro setting for jewelry and gemstone pictures.
As the pictures are going on the internet, the resolution is set at the lowest setting so the pictures upload quickly.
For cropping and sharpening up the pictures, I then use Irfanview which is a free program on the internet. Here is the link to the web site. www.irfanview.com
So its really not that difficult. You will need a camera with manual white balance, manual aperture setting, and a macro setting for the closeup pictures, along with the photo cube and lights.
Then start playing! Take lots of pictures, move the lighting around, use different camera angles and backgrounds. Open up some pictures in Irfanview and play there too.
Happy picture taking!
Ky
I recommend Black and White Photography, by Henry Horenstein for an easy to understand description of aperture and depth of field. Even if you have an all auto camera, you'll have a better understanding of what's going on when you take pictures. It's pretty cheap used on Amazon. The new edition has info on digital. I bought mine in 1992, back in the dark ages!
http://www.amazon.com/Black-White-Photography-Third-Revised/dp/0316373052/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274334907&sr=8-1
http://abstractions.wordpress.com/ (Check out her blog she has some great advice on photography.)
touch WB...where you aim at something white and click) plus a manual
setting to skew it toward blue or red (blue removes yellow tinge). It
also has options to do manual apeture etc. I'm sure it's discontinued as
well.....so you can probably get it fairly inexpensively on ebay etc.
Mine came with a power adapter so I don't have to run through all the
batteries! Make sure whatever camera you have has a macro/supermacro
setting for closeups as well!
Jeanne
Gray Scale kit for calibrating digital copiers/printers. I just place
it in the photo (it's getting cropped out anyway) and no matter how
schizophrenic my white balance gets, I can get back to "close to
normal" with just a few clicks in Photoshop. What a life and time-
saver that's turned out to be!
It's not perfect though.
~Rachelle
http://www.rachellekeller.com
Hi Ky.
Thanks for the informative article on photography. I wanted to add some info. I just bought a cool pics Nikon without doing too much research and found out
that the macro setting on it is not very good for jewelry photos. I did some research and found out Canon is better at macro mode. I know this is true from experience cuz my old camera that died was a canon and it did much better than my new CoolPix 12MP Nikon. SO I am returning it and getting another Canon.
Just thought you might wanna know.
Thanks again for the good info,
Mary Ellen Freundl
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