Jewellery Photos

Hi I am trying to improve my jewellery photos , I am using my D5100, Tamron 28-200mm macro, Yongnuo RF603 trigger, Kodak Tripod, home made Light box, 2 lights, and I have Lightroom 5 and Ps CS6 . so here is a ring I repaired , there are also two other pendants I have made in my gallery, I pre set the WB to my light box , shot at 1/30 f8 155mm ISO 100. I also have two flahes- Yongnuo YN560-II and YN468-II, the most sweet 50mm 1.8G and 18-55mm kit lens, just for your information . So how do I improve I want the background white, it looks white but I think it has a slight yellow cast to it , my aim is to have a clean crisp photo !

Maybe it's just the upload, but the ring doesn't look to be in focus. Did you manually focus the lens on the tripod after magnifying the ring in the LCD?

I don't use the LCD and this lens will only manual focus on the D5100, so I focused on the top of the ring using the focus light in the view finder , the base of the ring is out of focus .

What have you used for the background ?

Maybe try some clean white photocopying paper, you wont get any reflection with it.
​With some experimenting with your light positions and numbers, you should be able to reduce the shadows to a minimum.

If you use the LCD you can magnify the image and then manually adjust the focus (on the top of the ring) to get a sharper image than you will trying to focus a small image through the viewfinder. Additionally, taking the picture from the live view will reduce vibration in the camera from the mirror moving when you take the photo again resulting in a sharper image. I would also trigger the camera with a remote or the timer - pushing the shutter release in combination with a 1/30 exposure will have a slight movement to the camera not perceivable to you.

I have the D5100 and the same lenses you're using and all of the above suggestions will give you a better sharper image on that camera. Anyway, use the suggestions if you want, or don't.

Ironwood said:

What have you used for the background ?

Maybe try some clean white photocopying paper, you wont get any reflection with it.
​With some experimenting with your light positions and numbers, you should be able to reduce the shadows to a minimum.

Click to expand...

I use a white plastic, as for the paper I dont like the effect of the paper !

Try a few different WB settings, towards the blue and maybe a slower shutter speed might help...

pedroj said:

Try a few different WB settings, towards the blue and maybe a slower shutter speed might help...

Click to expand...

I am going to give it a go , I will post some samples next week as I wont have the time this week !

In my opinion, White Balance is not the issue; the issues I see are the slight over exposure and soft focus. Sharpening helped immensely when I did it as did dropping exposure by a quarter of a stop.

Since you have CS-6, I can tell you I used a High Pass filter to sharpen and an adjustment layer to correct exposure, again by -.025 in an Exposure adjustment layer. Try that, see what you think.

For a whiter background open the Adjustment/Exposure panel, select the "Highlights" eyedropper, click on your white background with the eyedropper and you're done.





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With a macro lens, as the image would be at 1:1 magnification, it is quite difficult to have an enite object liek the ring in focus.
You have to do focus stacking to get a 'all in focus' image.

for this pic, i think the focus is a bit off like HF noted & there seems to be some issue with the lighting

WhiteLight said:

With a macro lens, as the image would be at 1:1 magnification, it is quite difficult to have an enite object liek the ring in focus.
You have to do focus stacking to get a 'all in focus' image.

for this pic, i think the focus is a bit off like HF noted & there seems to be some issue with the lighting

Click to expand...

Well I have seen your macro photos and they are hot ! so I will be doing some more learning !