Here is an idea. If you want to try it and don't have the jewelry around a good test piece is silverware, like a shiny spoon. The idea is to get the spoon looking natural, not too much reflection and just enough to show it is metal...without losing the color. Losing the correct color of metal is one of the hard parts!

Throw in a little glass figure of some sort and try together...can you get it to sparkle and get the spoon? That pretty much sums up the difficulties in jewelry imaging...unless separate images are taken and postworked together. Nothing against the postwork since that is how the pros in the ads do it.

For me, we need a decent image for personal reference, decent enough for a slide show for customers and clear enough in detail for printing with an appraisal of the item.

I am a jeweler..a jeweler become the "staff photographer" since my camera is bigger. Well, also since my pics come out the best.. : ) I don't have time at work to do much digital imaging postwork since the other work is waiting for hands on from these worn out hands. That is it, in a nutshell.

I remember seeing the old "photo school" view camera shots of telephones(the large old dial ones). These were so very clear and perfect..following much lighting arrangement and polaroid back test shots, long exposures, etc. We can't do that. Still, to try is fun and some get better each day.

Somehow, somewhere there is balance between point source light and diffused light. Tom.

Message edited on: 12/30/2005 19:59