Hi everyone. I’m tearing my hair out, I’ve tried everything to get good clear vibrant photos of my work but nothing’s helping. I mainly use my Iphone as I get better results from using my camera, but as my earrings have shiny surfaces I either get reflection from anything in the room or distorted unnatural colours.
I recently bought a lightbox and it is brighter but it looks awful. I try natural light but the weather never seems to be right.
Any ideas will be gratefully appreciated as everyone else’s work seems well presented. Thanks Margaret
First thing which strikes me is that you need to have White backgrounds. That will help enormously. Have you any shiny white surfaces… the bath, a white china plate… I find them very useful and i’ve just been photographing something much shinier even than you earrings. Dichroic glass.
Margaret welcome to Folksy. Some good suggestions re photography here.
What iPhone do you have? I use a 12 and find if set to auto will correct the lighting for you. Usually find if during the day sets to natural light. I do not use a light tent but photo boards purely for the base and backing. The natural light comes from my left and the phone is mounted on a box thing with different lights. You can tilt or photograph from above. Cannot find where I bought it from but look like a white box when closed as all folds inside.
Another jeweller here so I feel your pain with reflections. I made myself a mini infinity curve with bits of white card and foil to bounce the light around (I use daylight from a window rather than any lights), if the light from the window is too strong I use a diffuser (about £10 on amazon I think) to reduce the reflections/ glare.
Here is the folksy blog post about taking product shots with your phone
(also Folksy show our images as square on our shop fronts, some of your products are suffering from cropping as a result. I opt to pre crop my photos to square so I can fling them on social media but you could just have a bigger clear space around the items in the photo which would be reduced when Folksy does the cropping)
I was taking product shots yesterday so realised I’ve got a pair of images to show the effect of using the diffuser. Window is on the right hand side, white card at the top and left hand side.
The best advice I can give for good photos is natural lighting. Near a window or even outdoors. On a gloomy day, photographs can be terrible.
If you use iPhone? Make sure macro is turned on for close up shots.
I’m on my sofa, can’t be bothered to move lol!! Look at the difference with this cushion with and without macro
