Over the course of my career I have dealt with many professional photographers who swore they could shoot jewelry. Most of them couldn't. The only one who blew my doors of was Robert Diamante, one of the top jewelry photographers in the country. But he's expensive and you have to book time with him and ship your work off. I only had four shots done by him and three of them were publised in either books or magazines, so money well spent.
This shot was by a local guy:
A Robert Diamante shot of my wedding rings:
Still needing to be able to document my work I tried to learn to shoot it myself with an old Canon AE-1 with a macro lens and light kit. However with the cost of tungsten balanced film and developing I just didn't get very far.
Shot with the Canon:
A few years ago, after belatedly entering the digital age, I picked up an Olympus point and shoot that had a macro feature, white balance, and RAW capabilities. It has served me well for shooting pics for the web. But it is limited and sucks at shooting anything other than what I bought it for.
Shot with the Olympus:
Kind of inconsistant but still better than the previous method.
About a week and half ago I picked up a Nikon D7000 and a used 60mm Macro lens and have been wearing the thing out. Since I hadn't done any serious photography in a couple of years I was a bit rusty. Pulled out the light set up and tripod and went to work. Shooting with a DSLR makes learning so much more accelerated. With all the meta data right there to look at I can make little adjustments to achieve the desired results. In just 8 days I went from turning the thing on to getting practice shots like this.
Also trying out different backgrounds for my oxidized silver work.
First one is on white unryu paper:
Second is with glass over the same paper.
With the D7000 and the same lights I have gotten way better results than all those other pro photographers. With digital the learning curve has been exponentially shortened.
The D7000 delivers, is easy to learn and down right addictive to shoot with.
This shot was by a local guy:
A Robert Diamante shot of my wedding rings:
Still needing to be able to document my work I tried to learn to shoot it myself with an old Canon AE-1 with a macro lens and light kit. However with the cost of tungsten balanced film and developing I just didn't get very far.
Shot with the Canon:
A few years ago, after belatedly entering the digital age, I picked up an Olympus point and shoot that had a macro feature, white balance, and RAW capabilities. It has served me well for shooting pics for the web. But it is limited and sucks at shooting anything other than what I bought it for.
Shot with the Olympus:
Kind of inconsistant but still better than the previous method.
About a week and half ago I picked up a Nikon D7000 and a used 60mm Macro lens and have been wearing the thing out. Since I hadn't done any serious photography in a couple of years I was a bit rusty. Pulled out the light set up and tripod and went to work. Shooting with a DSLR makes learning so much more accelerated. With all the meta data right there to look at I can make little adjustments to achieve the desired results. In just 8 days I went from turning the thing on to getting practice shots like this.
Also trying out different backgrounds for my oxidized silver work.
First one is on white unryu paper:
Second is with glass over the same paper.
With the D7000 and the same lights I have gotten way better results than all those other pro photographers. With digital the learning curve has been exponentially shortened.
The D7000 delivers, is easy to learn and down right addictive to shoot with.