THE BEADING GEM'S JOURNAL

Natural Light Jewelry Photography with the Modahaus Portable Studio Set Up

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 04:35 AM PDT

Okay, you're all going to have to indulge me here. I was so excited when I bought my Modahaus I could hardly wait to try it out.

This first picture I took for last week's giveaway post was the most decent jewelry pix I've ever done with the least amount of effort!

I've had more time to experiment with the portable studio set up over the weekend. The two lucky winners of the giveaway which I will randomly pick later today and other new owners might be interested to see additional pictures and tips.

COLORED BACKGROUNDS
If you hate taking pictures of your jewelry, and I know some of you do, then natural light photography using the colored polymer sheets is your best bet. No fiddling with lights and camera settings. No post editing with Photoshop either apart from cropping. Why spend time photographing and editing when you'd rather be creating jewelry?

For this photo shoot, I used my Lumix camera in automatic mode with the timer setting since I have tripods (mini and the Modopocket). If you have just a point and shoot, select the macro function and make sure your white balance is set to shady or indoors.

The Modahaus is quick to set up but I took a bit longer than the video demonstration! It pays not to rush as you might accidentally over bend the tabs at the side. Considering how awkward it is to fold up my large pop-up light tent, the Modahaus is a breeze to set up and pack away in its sleeve.

I also took a leaf out of Lex's book and set up my laptop on the same table as the Modahaus. Gee, my 17 inch laptop looks huge next to it! That's how compact it is. I have a PC whereas Lex has a Mac with probably a program which streams the photos into the computer. I just tethered the cable whenever I needed to download a batch. This method made it easy to review bigger pictures and decide if I needed to take more or not.

Just in case, I used an old white sheet so the wooden table or the green table cloth I normally have won't affect the colors. I also used 2 bull dog clips on the reorientated Modahaus to hang my necklace. I spaced them apart until I got the desired suspended length. The combined weight made the set up unstable so I just propped it up from behind with a clear glass jar.

The necklace I chose to photograph is the one which I had the most trouble with, probably because it is practically all shiny silver. You can see the dull original pictures in my shop which I have yet to replace. To liven it up, I used another tip from Lex. I sandwiched 3 sheets underneath the translucent flap of the Modahaus - opaque white at the bottom, then red, then the blue with the shiny side down - to get purple!

No light tunnel, necklace suspended from the top

I rather liked the transitioning colors created by the infinity curve, so I partially suspended the necklace from the side using just one bull dog clip to try and capture that effect.

I prefer this picture as the composition was more relaxed and the shiny silver produced some lovely reflections off the polymer sheets. The softly transitioning colors created by the infinity curve made the photo also less rigid than the one above.

No light tunnel, necklace suspended from the side

The decision to use a light tunnel or not will depend on the piece and your personal preferences.

with light tunnel

Earrings can be photographed flat but I always like to include pictures of them hanging especially if they are chandeliers. You can hang them from props like many do or if you're masochistic, from fishing lines for the no-props look. No fishing lines for me, I want something quick!

In last week's post, I mentioned my idea of popping out the glass of a small picture frame for earring pictures. It does work but don't place the glass directly on the Modahaus. The edges might still be sharp. I managed to scratch my Modahaus a little when I was experimenting with potential supports. What worked was the double alligator/crocodile clip stand which I sometimes use for bracelet making. Nothing like getting double use out of your tools and equipment!

No light tunnel, camera on mini-tripod

I muted the blue sheet by placing it under the translucent one. The resulting picture though had a lot of reflections :

So I tried the white card stock-with- a-hole-for-the-lens trick which many photographers use :

And viola, almost no reflections! The hanging earrings appear against what looks like a lovely blue sky on a sunny cloudless day!

WHITE BACKGROUND
It is possible to use a white background with natural light but you will need to do one more step - photo editing. This is what the earrings look like with the opaque white sheet and the light tunnel:

White opaque background, light tunnel, unedited

Dull and underwhelming, isn't it? I happened to send it to Lex who lightened the background with a photo-editor (below). You can easily do that yourself as outlined in this past post.

Photo-edited to lighten background

What if you have an old camera with no macro and don't have a camera stand? You can still do it! Lex sent me this handheld experimental picture of an amethyst necklace. He deliberately used an old camera, a Canon Compact 7 to help him "get into the zone" i.e. understand the difficulties we non-professionals face. As the camera has no macro, he did a slight zoom in to frame the necklace.

White opaque background, no light tunnel

He says to avoid direct sunlight (bright rays) but one way to soften the harsh cast of such light is by photographing with net or voile curtains drawn across the window. You can see the gentle striations of the background due to the curtains which add visual interest to the picture.

See how the back earring of my earrings pictures is softly out of focus ? I kind of like that artistic look. But professional photographers like Lex tend to avoid such shallow depth of field/focus pictures. They try and get the whole piece into focus. They either use focus stacking techniques (ugh - we're not going there) or simply by decreasing the aperture. (This is not possible for most point and shoot cameras)

In automatic mode, my camera has a very large aperture (f 3.3 - 4.0) for macro shots which gives me sharp foregrounds and out of focus backgrounds. But for Lex's amethyst necklace, he used a smaller aperture of f 6.3 so the whole necklace is seen clearly. If you have a digital SLR or something like my Lumix, you can do this too.

Thanks, Lex for the tips and lessons! More?

Before You Go :

For more tutorials check out my Jewelry Making Tips

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Some Pretty Earrings to Wear!

Posted: 31 Jul 2011 03:00 PM PDT

Many of the beaders who come to our workshop do so because they want to make earrings. The reason is, there is no such thing as too many earrings! Brenda chose some pretty millefiore discs for hers. She also carefully chose seed beads to coordinate with the bigger beads. This pair should go with many outfits!

The beads Carrie chose for both her earrings below also came from Debbie's (my co-instructor and friend) collection. The wire swirls at the bottom of the first pair can either be made by hand and then hammered or you can purchase them that way. For a tutorial, check yesterday's post. The pink pair consist of small lamp work beads.