Gemstone Photography - Technical Topic

[Wally69]

Getting the right orientation of the stone to the camera is another challenge I have.

Your adjustable stand is awesome Sinhof, getting a tripod has been a huge step forward for me. The other thing I find useful is a turntable, tweezers and bamboo kabab stick to play around with the stones orientation.

I havent tried underlighting yet but have had some interesting results by moving a light source around to highlight a particular facet or create a flash of reflection within a stone.

 

[Wally69]

Thanks for the education and suggestions

I am also waiting on delivery of a set of extension tubes. Added a lense cleaning kit to my purchase as well, bloody hound decided to stick her nose into it and see what all the fuss was about :bomb: :argh: 8.( :argh:

I fitted a Hoya UV filter to my lens just for the added protection. Clean it when required, bin it if it gets damaged...

Picked one up yesterday MrM, got a note saying my cleaning kit has been returned to sender due to damaged packaging, so will have to wait a few extra days. Cheap extension tubes are also in transit.

 

[SinHof]

Hi Wally,
"A question regarding your cheap extension tubes"????????????? Do they have the necessary electronic connections to connect the lens back to the camera body? if not you will have backed yourself into a corner in that without a fair bit of stuffing about you will not be able to alter your F stop settings.
Cheers, SinHof.

 

[Wally69]

Hi Wally,
"A question regarding your cheap extension tubes"????????????? Do they have the necessary electronic connections to connect the lens back to the camera body? if not you will have backed yourself into a corner in that without a fair bit of stuffing about you will not be able to alter your F stop settings.
Cheers, SinHof.

They are marketed as having the electronic connections for the canon camera, time will tell if the marketing exceeds reality.

 

[Mr Magoo]

Hi Wally,
"A question regarding your cheap extension tubes"????????????? Do they have the necessary electronic connections to connect the lens back to the camera body? if not you will have backed yourself into a corner in that without a fair bit of stuffing about you will not be able to alter your F stop settings.
Cheers, SinHof.

As Wally explained they are marketed to have the connections but when I looked into it some had problems with connectivity between lens and camera.
The JJC tubes seemed to get a good review and I managed to pick a pair up, brand new, for $55. Which is still cheap.

 

[Dihusky]

As SinHof said, connecting between the camera and lens is critical, not many lenses left where you can flick from camera control to manual, all of mine are now electronic except for a big Nikkor zoom. To shoot using a macro lens or extension tubes, depth of field is the big item you need to be in control of so you can keep as much of the gem in focus as possible.

Back in the 1990's Jim Frazier created a lens with a huge depth of field for filming wee beasties and holding the presenter in focus in the background, David Attenborough used it extensively but it's a cine lens and worth a tidy fortune. Would be awesome for shooting gem videos

 

[Wally69]

:Y: Might be time for some 101 depth of field training........how to, and how to get the best out adjusting the settings on stones.

 

[SinHof]

Hi Folks,
Thought I'd have a play/attempt at photographing gemstones to get some first hand experience at what is required to produce an acceptable image, after several hours of trying different ideas I can see where some here are having a few issues with their gem shots. Necessity being the mother of invention the saying goes, I thought time to try something different in the way the stones are set up for the camera. Wally69 mentioned he uses a turntable, that certainly has some merit in terms of stone orientation, taking that idea one step further a 200x200mm sheet of white perspex was mounted on a silky smooth tripod ball head which can also be rotated, as well as tilted, this has the advantage of being able to move the stone into virtually any position. Now here is the strange aspect, how to hold the stone so as to eliminate those mostly unwanted shadows when contrasty lighting is being used. Two 3/16 metal thread screws were mounted in the perspex base 140mm apart and a tight loop of 1Kg nylon fishing line was strung between the posts, two small plastic wedges were cut and where required inserted into the loop at either end to adjust the width to accommodate stones of various sizes.
As the stone is suspended some 40mm above the base, various background materials can be placed on the base without having to touch the stone. Due to the background being well below the stone any shadows are out of shot on the soft out-of-focus background. Once an acceptable shot has been taken any evidence of the nylon fishing line can easily be cloned out of the image during post processing. This approach is probably not all that suitable for clear or light coloured stones where the nylon line can be seen through the stone..
Lighting at this stage consists of two LedLenza adjustable output LED torches mounted on adjustable heads, being able to adjust the height and angle of the lights along with the almost endless angles the stone can be oriented in should provide some interesting stone shots.
All of the above is purely experimental, some aspects may be of use to folk here and or perhaps promote other ideas from those with more experience with this interesting type of photography.
Here are a couple of rrrrough phone pics to illustrate the system.
Cheers, SinHof.

 

[Wally69]

:inlove: All the toys are coming out now

Mounting them on a mirror is another thing I have tried, double the bang with the reflection, but more suited to a slightly offset photo to highlight the majority of facets and capture the shape of a stone. It will window out some of the sparkle in the stone but, if the light is right, you should be able to capture some sharp whole-facet reflections for a great mixed-bag outcome.......I struggled with the focus

Interested in your click to shot ratio, I range between 20:1 and 70:1 ATM

 

[SinHof]

Hi Wally,
Yes mate the toys have been gathering dust for too long, it's been fun dragging some of it out and giving it a bit of use. I have a borrowed stone from my neighbour, red garnet I think, it has quite a few marks on it but it's OK to try different methods. Both torches are on charge at the moment, after dinner I will see what happens with the floating idea from the point of view of focus/depth of field,lighting and exposure, thus far the DOF side of the equation looks OK, controlling the lighting and reflections is another deal. A mirror as a background in the floating set-up could be interesting as you suggested, will have a play and see where it leads, there seems to be an almost endless range of possible combinations of lighting and stone orientation, also it's good to be able to exchange different ideas with the folk here.
Still very new to this type of graphing, it's certainly interesting, just need to throw a lot more time at it and see what happens, still a bit more gear sitting in the cupboard that may see some use along the way, which will be good, it's a shame having all this stuff and not using it more frequently.
Cheers, SinHof.

 

[Dihusky]

This is about simple lighting and how you can have fun photographing gems and playing with little adjustments so see if they make the image improve.

The basis of this is simple, use stuff you have around your home so there is no need to go shopping, the only proviso is a tripod and a light fitted with a daylight LED globe.

Here is the basic setup, a stone, a block of white styrofoam, some baking paper, tin foil and some BBQ skewers, that's it... nothing else needed to make this work and have some fun.

First two photos are the basic setup and the stone in the ambient light in the room, Camera is a Panasonic GH4 with a 60mm Olympus macro lens. The camera settings are Daylight white balance, ISO 400, Aperture priority with an aperture of f:11 to produce a good depth of field, single shot and timer set to 10 seconds to remove any camera shake. Oh and the focus point has been set to small and aligned to the stone, cutting out the background as I want the background to be out of focus.

The photos of the stones have been cropped slightly but NO other adjustments to ensure the comparisons are as close as possible and the stone is a piece of Padpradasha CZ.

And this is the stone in the ambient light:

For the next image I turned the desk light on:

And this is the stone under the harsh directional light:

Next I added a small sheet of baking paper supported on a couple of skewers, the paper is only just outside the camera image frame and sloping towards the top of the gem:

And this is the image:

Now I wanted to add some light to the other side of the stone so added some foil. The reason for the foil is it reflects most of the light from the opposing side, if I had used paper or a bit of foam the reflection would have been softer and dimmer.

This is the resulting image, you'll need to look carefully to see the changes, they are subtle but significant.

Finally I added a small piece of foam on the opposite side of the stone to try and get a little bit more definition in the top.

Did it work, was it necessary? Well this is where it becomes a personal thing.

There is a lot more one can do working with a setup like this, but overall it is simple, fun to play with and costs bugger all. You can change the reflective stuff like the foil, of the top foam, just play with it.

Some might ask why I didn't add a second lamp and the answer is simple, it makes things much more complicated balancing the two lights, but playing with different types of reflective media is much simpler and you gain a better understanding of how the light and gem play together.

Finally I added a leaf:

Same lighting setup but because I lost the white background the EV had to change and went to '0', I also changed the aperture to f:22 to get more of the leaf in focus. Plus the gem angle is a bit different, but one can play with that until it's right, just used as an example of the EV impact plus Depth of Field that Wally was asking about. The chart at the start of this topic will help explain the DoF part.

 

[Mackka]

Nice toys you blokes.

 

[Mr Magoo]

Now here is the strange aspect, how to hold the stone so as to eliminate those mostly unwanted shadows when contrasty lighting is being used.

I have used the transparent bubble tablets like asprin are packaged in to hold the stone vertical. I have also tried the plastic transparent part of packaging that radiator caps come in. I think I used the rad cap packaging in the top image and the tablet bubble in the second and third image.

Mounting them on a mirror is another thing I have tried, double the bang with the reflection, but more suited to a slightly offset photo to highlight the majority of facets and capture the shape of a stone. It will window out some of the sparkle in the stone but, if the light is right, you should be able to capture some sharp whole-facet reflections for a great mixed-bag outcome.......I struggled with the focus

I'm also a fan of the mirror. This is one of my fav shots. It's not at the best angle but it looks surreal.
I too struggled with the focus with that camera as most of those shots show. One of the reasons for the upgrade. Although my upgrade does not allow for remote viewing from a computer unfortunately. Considering another upgrade but that won't be near Christmas though. 8.(

All shots were taken on a compact Canon Powershot SX100 outside if I remember correctly.

CZ
Quartz
Tormalike
Chrysoprase

 

[Dihusky]

Got another mini tutorial planned but will be a little way off as things are a bit hectic right now, this one will be on making a stone 'float' so it appears as though there is no background or shadows , used to use it in the studio and produces some interesting effects. Hopefully it will help overcome the shadow problem you mentioned SinHof

 

[Wally69]

I cant wait for my parts to turn up and do some experimenting, some good ideas flowing that I need to try. erfect: :Y: erfect: :Y:

 

[SinHof]

Hi Dihusky and Wally,
Will be interesting to see how you deal with shadows mate, the red garnet I've been playing with is just too dense to get enough light through it to show its full potential, will return it to my neighbour and see what other examples he has, disappointing result for a first attempt at photographing gemstones. However, had no issues with DOF and exposure with the set-ups I tried, just have to find a stone that will transmit some light, work in progress, still.
Cheers SinHof.

 

[Wally69]

Hi Dihusky and Wally,
Will be interesting to see how you deal with shadows mate, the red garnet I've been playing with is just too dense to get enough light through it to show its full potential, will return it to my neighbour and see what other examples he has, disappointing result for a first attempt at photographing gemstones. However, had no issues with DOF and exposure with the set-ups I tried, just have to find a stone that will transmit some light, work in progress, still.
Cheers SinHof.

If you still have it, I would like to see what you think when placing it outside in full sunlight, then shading the stone and photographing straight into the table of the stone.....if that makes sense.

 

[Lefty]

This is starting to make sense - Dihusky and SinHof, you guys are real magicians erfect: :Y:

 

[Lefty]

SinHof, the one stone I seem to have consistent success photographing is red garnet. Photographed on a mirror, seems to work just about every time.

 

[Lefty]

I never even thought.of the baking paper idea - I used a cumbersome translucent white plastic box to diffuse the light. Sometimes it did work but was a bit of a pain.