Jewelry photography has nearly all of the elements that make a studio photographer break into a sweat: tiny, delicate subjects, highly reflective surfaces, precise color requirements and a choosy clientele. Often considered a specialized niche, the ever-developing power of each succession of digital cameras is bringing this creative, interesting corner of photography into a new light.

Our jewelry clients need photos that fulfill a variety of roles; used in catalogs, promotions, advertisements, invitations and web use, the files need to translate well into color, black and white applications and a variety of paper stocks. The high value of many of the pieces means that the client cannot afford the risk or loss of market opportunity of an extended photo shoot. In most cases, we try to shoot as many as 6-8 setups a session, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you start trying to get the light to fall just right on that large flawless diamond.

The advent of digital SLRs into our workflow has revolutionized the process, creativity and market effectiveness of our jewelry shoots. Digital cameras enhance commercial work for a variety of reasons. One of the primary ones is speed. We routinely turn around commercial color print jobs for our clients in a matter of a few days, from capture, editing, layout, pre-press, printing and delivery. Being able to shoot in the studio with the client is a streamlined process, as we can all see the progression of the image in nearly real time. Quality is of course the single most important aspect of the studio shoot. Although there are a number of photographers who prefer to let the technical side of the film versus digital vesus megapixels argument inform their choice of shooting medium, we have always focused on the end product rather than the numbers. The current crop of 6 megapixel SLRs delivers for us clean, noise free files that have the resolution sufficient for nearly any use we put it to, from 200 LPI offset printing to large-format display posters for trade show.

The approach we take to shooting jewelry effectively in the studio is fairly simple. I use 3 main lenses for the work, depending on the size of the piece. A Nikon 60mm Micro lens; great for very close work and always sharp. A Nikon 85mm PCS tilt-and shift lens. This specialized lens adds the ability to control perspective and focus fall-off in a manner similar to a bellows on a view camera. Very effective on pieces that are laid flat or at an angle on the tabletop. Also effective in creating controllable depth of field experiments. The third lens is an unusual Russian built 35mm tilt and shift lens for a Nikon mount. The exposure has to be controlled manually, but this lens is terrific for shooting larger pieces where the desired effect is a slight wide angle, placing an emphasis on the foreground object and enlarging it slightly.

I light using one of two set ups: If I am looking for a short depth of field to the image for a more atmospheric effect, I light with hot lights. I have a lowel Rifa light with a 600 watt bulb. This soft-box style instrument is my min light, usually placed directly overhead the scene or a little to the side. I then highlight key areas, particularly the stones, with one or two 600 watt lowel fresnels. These units can be focused and closed down to a very small source using the barn doors. The direct, non diffused light source is generally needed to bring out the sparkle in the stone, but it requires very specific and small areas of application to keep it from casting hotspots or harsh shadows. My other set up is with studio strobes from speedotrons brown line. Is use these when I want a crisper effect, with a lot more depth. Again, I usually set a soft light as my main source above the piece, and then use other instruments with some light diffusion or a grid to bring a little hard light into the stone.

I generally shoot tethered to my Mac laptop, using Nikon Capture 3 software, which allows me to control almost all of the camera’s functions throught he laptop, including triggering the shutter. This is a useful feature in part because it removes any chance of camera motion during the capture. I shoot jpegs while I get my setup working, as I can view these more quickly to check for focus, lighting, and so forth. Once I have established the shot, I switch to the NEF setting and generally bracket the image up and down a stop. Having these bracketed files helps in the event that you want to create an optimized exposure later. By simply layering the exposures and doing some simple soft edged brushing in a layer mask in photoshop one can create an ideal exposure without having to spend an excessive amount of time managing the lighting during capture. Probably the single most challenging aspect of the jewelry shoot is managing reflections. There are two ways that I manage this issue. The first is to simply remove from the surrounding environment anything that you DON’T want reflected. It helps to shoot in a darkened space, without windows or ambient light sources. Controlling the reflection of the light sources you are using is generally a matter of moving them slightly to get the desired effect. The second way to manage reflections is create an environment that you WANT refelected. This includes the use of light tents and diffusion boxes. These items are commercially available but you can create your own diffusion environment with a sheet of drafting mylar, a sheer white fabric, of some squares of white foamcore. I keep small squares about 12” a side of foamcore around, and have one with a 70mm hold cut out of the center which I can mount over the camera lens, effectively obscuring the camera from the reflection.

In general, the shoot about 20-30 frames of a given set-up, shifting things a little, bracketing, and framing slight differently. We sort though the files in iview media pro, tag the ones we ligke and open them in photoshop. Generally the files are ultimately destined for high-quality offset printing and web use, so we sharpen, clean up and color adjust with those spaces in mind.

The proof is in the pudding, though. So far over the last 3 years of shooting jewelry digitally every one of our clients is still with us and has never looked back to film!

Kevin Sprague runs the 5 person graphic design and imaging business Studio Two (www.studiotwo.com)