My Other Photography Guides

I am moving all of my eBay Photography guides to another location. These new guides use larger illustrations and make it easier to find the info you need. Topics you will want to read include Cameras, Controls and Settings and Basic Lighting Techniques.

You can find my new guides by using this address in your Web browser...

camerajim.com

In this Guide, I'll discuss the use of light tents and other lighting techniques for jewelry, flatware and glassware.

These Guides have been adapted from two eBay Workshops I recently hosted and are based on my experience as a product photographer and as a successful eBay seller.

Creating Soft, Diffused Light

In my guide on Basic Lighting Techniques, I talk about the importance of soft lighting to help to show off the shape and texture of a subject. However, shiny subjects, such as jewelry, flatware or metallic objects, need even more diffused light to avoid harsh, glaring highlights.

For this, you need an even, surrounding light source. One way of creating that is with a light tent.

Light Tents

This lighting tool is used often by professional product photographers and commercially-made light tents have become popular with eBay sellers. You'll see hundreds  of these for sale if you do an eBay search for "light tent" in the Cameras and Photos category. Most of them are sold under some variation of the "Cube. These are essentially small, white, cube-shaped tents, with one side open to shoot into with a camera.

I haven't used one of these small commercial light tents commonly sold on ebay mainly because I'm too cheap to pay for something that's so easy to make myself.

Any light tent is simply a way to surround your subject with a translucent material, which diffuses your light. You then evenly illuminate the outside of the light tent, typically with one light on either side of it. This is almost ideal lighting for shiny stuff like jewelry.

The Milk Jug Light Tent

The simplest and cheapest form of light tent I know for small objects is a milk jug with the bottom cut off (you shoot through the neck or a hole cut in the side), like this...



This will work great for small items.

Moving up in size and cost, some of the things you can use are a large white plastic bowl; a translucent storage container; styrofoam sheets (glued together into a cube shape); a white sheet suspended over and around a table; translucent diffusion panels (you can make these yourself from PVC tubing to form rectangular frames, with white cloth stretched over them); or even a large white tent.

My Dollar Store Light Tent

I mostly use a large plastic bowl I bought at a dollar store. It's big enough for almost anything I shoot.

Shooting Flatware

The high gloss of flatware can be very difficult to shoot. You want it to look shiny, but direct flash or other harsh lighting can make it look glaring and harsh. Here's a shot I took of a gold-plated fork, using just the direct flash on my camera, in fully automatic mode...



That's not very good, is it? The highlights are glaring, because the flash reflects straight back at the camera. At the same time, there are too many dark areas where the fork is reflecting just the dark room around it.

Here's a close-up of that same fork, shot in my dollar store light tent...



Both the highlights and shadows are smoother and there is no significant glare.

I cheated a little there, by adding a small piece of black paper inside the jug. That way, there were a few dark reflections, which help to distinguish this as a glossy finish, rather than an overall gold, satin finish.

Jewelry Photography with a Light Tent

Jewelry can be beautiful, but it's also one of the most difficult subjects for photography. On one small item, you can have many different surfaces, such as smooth gold or silver, faceted gems and even textured engraving or filigree. These all reflect and refract light in different ways. And, since light is what we're capturing when we take a photo, how we light each item will control how the final image looks.

Once again, a small light tent is all it takes in most cases to get jewelry to shine without glare. Here's a detail shot of a gold necklace I sold a while ago on eBay...



And, I think a blue background worked well for this watch...



A watch such as that also has special lighting needs, mainly because of the flat face of the crystal, which can reflect light and obscure the dial. In this case, I had to carefully place a small spot of black paper inside my light tent, so that would be the area reflected by the crystal.

After I got this image onto my computer, I also sharpened it a bit, in order to bring out the fire and sparkle of the diamonds.

Glassware & Crystal

Crystal and other clear or transparent glassware is another difficult subject, but that's because many people treat it as if it was opaque. However, the reason such an item can look so beautiful is because of its delicate transparency.

If you blast away with a camera-mounted flash or place all your lighting in front, near the camera, you will get lots of reflections, not the refraction of light through the glass.

You also don't want to use a light tent with glass. That will give you distracting reflections from every surface of the glass, instead of showcasing the transparency.

Rear Window Lighting

The best approach is to light your glass items from the rear or from the top. You can use either a light or dark background, depending on the color and other characteristics of the glass. Colorless or cut glass often looks good against a dark background.

So, with that in mind, here's a simple setup for glass, using just a sheet of black posterboard, curved up in front of a bright, non-sunny window, with the light striking a crystal vase from the rear...



And this is the resulting shot...

Shooting Glassware with Artificial Light

That wasn't bad, but I like the control I can get from artificial lights in an indoor setup. Here is just such an arrangement, using a single light in a small reflector...



In this case, I've aimed the light so it shines almost exclusively on a white paper background, which sweeps up behind the decanter I'm shooting. The decanter is then mainly seen by the light reflected from the background.

Because my background is white this time, I also propped up two small black sheets of posterboard on either side of the decanter. These will be reflected by the side areas of the item and to give it more dimension and shape.

Here's the final result...





If this guide has been helpful to you, please let me know by clicking the "Yes" button below. Thanks!

Copyright 2006, camerajim and Sigma-2 Associates, Inc.