Looking for some feedback

weiland79

Hi all im fairly new to photography, i just completed a short course with the Dublin school of photography which im sure a few of you will be familiar with.

My main interest is in taking pictures of my shop products, namely jewellery.
Ive attached an image of my most recent photo and am looking for some feed back.
I want to use these for my website.
I have some basic photoshop knowledge but im thinking that a course would be beneficial.

Thanks in advance.

Oops pic files are too big. How can i resize and post?

weiland79

Dammit! Not a good start

GBX

Post them to Flickr or similar and link them on here.

weiland79

https://www.flickr.com/photos/91915471@N02/shares/74q5uh

https://www.flickr.com/photos/91915471@N02/shares/4v5G46

Hopefully that works. Is there an app for flikr because using the site on a phone is horrible?

Adrian.Sadlier

Firstly, I am no expert

Lighting, contrast, composition etc. look good enough. However, as product shots I think not enough of the jewelry is in sharp focus. At f/18 your are also going to introduce some softening of the image because of diffraction.

Could I suggest you use f/8 to f/11 and use focus stacking. This is where you take several shots, focusing first on the nearest path of the image you want to be sharp and then take a series of images, moving the focus point a little bit further back in the image (literally a millimeter or two for each shot). Use manual focusing. The DOF is tiny working at 1:1 magnification. With the subject 25cm from the focal plane of the camera (the sensor) the lens you have will give a DOF of 1.5mm at f/11.

Then in Photoshop you can use focus stacking to combine the multiple images into one image with all the necessary bits sharp from front to back.

You will find plenty of videos on youtube on how to do this.

weiland79

Adrian.Sadlier wrote: »

Firstly, I am no expert

Lighting, contrast, composition etc. look good enough. However, as product shots I think not enough of the jewelry is in sharp focus. At f/18 your are also going to introduce some softening of the image because of diffraction.

Could I suggest you use f/8 to f/11 and use focus stacking. This is where you take several shots, focusing first on the nearest path of the image you want to be sharp and then take a series of images, moving the focus point a little bit further back in the image (literally a millimeter or two for each shot). Use manual focusing. The DOF is tiny working at 1:1 magnification. With the subject 25cm from the focal plane of the camera (the sensor) the lens you have will give a DOF of 1.5mm at f/11.

Then in Photoshop you can use focus stacking to combine the multiple images into one image with all the necessary bits sharp from front to back.

You will find plenty of videos on youtube on how to do this.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Funnily enough someone else mentioned image stacking to me today, id never heard of it before.
Ill look into it over the weekend and post the results next week

Thanks again.

Heebie

Basically what Adrian said. I think they might be slightly overexposed, but the soft spots could be causing it to look like it's overexposed.

ED E

IMO you should be using a whitebox/flash to completely remove the background. The blueish cloth or whatever is a bit strange.

For example this is how Weirs do it:
https://weirandsons.ie/gucci-gg-running-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html

weiland79

ED E wrote: »

IMO you should be using a whitebox/flash to completely remove the background. The blueish cloth or whatever is a bit strange.

For example this is how Weirs do it:
https://weirandsons.ie/gucci-gg-running-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html

Well thats definitely how i would like my images to look. Hopefully with a bit of work ill get there. Im using a lightbox that is specifically designed for jewellery. I know what you mean about the blueish tint.
It bothers me too.

weiland79

https://flic.kr/p/RTL98q

https://flic.kr/p/RTL95j

This is the lightbox im using.

Adrian.Sadlier

weiland79 wrote: »

..... I know what you mean about the blueish tint.
It bothers me too.

I assume you are shooting in RAW format. You should be able to easily adjust the white balance by adjusting the temp in camera raw by setting it to 5500k and tweaking it from there. When you find the "look" you want then take a note of the setting. You can then set the white balance value in your camera to manual and specify this value.

CelticRambler

ED E wrote: »

For example this is how Weirs do it:

weiland79 wrote: »

Well thats definitely how i would like my images to look.

FWIW, I'd sooner buy your jewellery than the Weirs ring, based on the photo. Yours looks classy, the Weirs one looks like a cheap and tacky stock image. :cool:

If you're looking for tutorials, here are a few from (retired) advertising photographer Phillip McCordall:
- basic product photography (and why not to use a lightbox! )
- focus stacking
- photographing glass and ornaments

weiland79

Hi all, so I've made some progress this week i think.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/91915471@N02/46024033175/in/dateposted-public/

I've managed to get rid of the blue hue. I've decided to stick with the real look and not to over photoshop my images.
One thing i would like is to have the back of the ring more in focus. My settings for the above image are.
ISO 800
Shutter 200
Aperture F11

If i move further away from the ring then i can get all of the ring in focus but the issue then is that the ring looks too small on the site.
I'm wondering can i keep the distance required to keep the ring in focus and adjust how close it appears to the camera in photoshop?

I hope that make sense

Thanks

Adrian.Sadlier

weiland79 wrote: »

........If i move further away from the ring then i can get all of the ring in focus but the issue then is that the ring looks too small on the site.

I noticed on flickr that the image looks like the full file with little or no cropping. If this is the case you can shoot from further away, get everything in focus, crop the image so it appears larger on screen. You could crop in by 50% and the files would still look great on screen. Depending on whether you allow zooming or not on your website.

Otherwise use focus stacking!

ED E

weiland79 wrote: »

If i move further away from the ring then i can get all of the ring in focus but

You need to do some post. Nobody posts direct from camera to web. Even paint can crop.