Tips on Photographing Your Handcrafted Sterling Silver Jewellery

How to Photograph Your Handcrafted Sterling Silver Jewellery

Everyone these days seems to have a digital camera but probably most of us won't realise just how much modern digital cameras are capable of and this includes photography of your gold and silver jewellery. In this article we hope to dispell some of your fears when taking pictures of jewellery which professionals already know but tend to keep a closely guarded secret.

Firstly it isn't worth buying an expensive top of the range camera. You can pick up a digital camera with all the bells and whistles for as little as a £100. However it's worth your while researching, so buy a branded make with this amount as your lower budget. Professional photography studios have large white flood lit spaces but a light tent can be a useful piece of kit for your jewellery images. These tents provide a 360 degree lit environment to light objects evenly from every angle however our experience shows that natural day light can be just as good on a bright day providing you can avoid the direct glare of sunlight. However the light tent does provide a clutter free background to lay your jewellery on. Natural daylight bulbs are worth investing in in order to create a natural lighting condition for the reflective surfaces of polished jewellery. We will now consider the three main factors in taking great photography.

Focus: Modern digital cameras have large colour viewfinders so you can tell immediately whether you have the camera focused or not. However consult the manual if in doubt. The important function to activate on your camera is the 'macro' mode. This mode is for close up photography that allows you to hold the camera close up to the object. Once in macro mode you can use the zoom control to fine tune the close up shot. An additional piece of kit you may want to try is a tripod.

Lighting: Lighting is essential to get right. Too dark and you can't see a thing and too light and everything burns out to reveal a nothing but a blurry white out. The key is to use soft lighting. Turn off your automatic camera flash as it creates dark shadows and light saturated contrasting surfaces. You need a uniform steady light for best results. You can't beat good old natural daylight for such balance so if you use a light tent try daylight bulbs first off. These type of bulbs don't overheat and therefore don't create an uncomfortable atmosphere to work in.  When using a light tent the light i diffused evenly around the jewellery.

Exposure: Again consult the manual for this setting. Exposure is the setting that controls the amount of light that is allowed into the cameras image sensor. Normally the view finder will give you an idea of the amount of light entering the camera and by altering the settings the image will go darker or lighter depending which way you adjust. Underexposure leads to white backgrounds turning grey. Normally the automatic exposure creates this problem so sometimes you may need to turn it off altogether and set it manually. Being a digital camera it costs you nothing to try for a few test shots and once you have found the perfect setting take a note of it for next time.

Jewellery photography is all ways a hit and miss affair but the more experience you gain the better your results will be as time goes by. You can enhance any serious image problems on your computer. Eventually there cones a day that by simply studying the daylight outside your window you will know straight away whether a jewellery shot will work. Once you have conquered this task it will save you thousands of pounds on photography bills.