Choosing lens and camera for jewelry photos

tanarele

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I am new to photografy. I am looking for advise or ideas about what kind of lens and camera should i purchase. I need a camera and lens for taking a photos of jewelry which i make.

I know that there are many similar questions on the web, but all of them focus specifically on choosing macro lenses. My jewelry is quite big, like necklaces, bracelets and big brooches, so i will not need a very close up photos. Photo should fit a whole necklace with a little space around it. I guess i will not need macro for that. But i need a very sharp view of objects. I will take photos of objects, placed 20 - 70 cm from camera.

It is very important for me to have really wide depth of field in the photo, so that it would be possible to have whole object in focus. It will always be shiny metallic objects on black textile fabric. Could someone suggest what kind of lens could fit my needs? This should be a sharp lens, i guess. Also i will need a camera, too!
I add an example of what objects will appear in my photos. This is not a perfect photos, (especially the second one- i want it to be sharp :) ) it is only to show what i am talking about.
DSC07714m.JPG DSC04508 C.jpg
 
i really like my sigma 105 micro, but for you, i suggest a shorter focal length for more DOF. my old 60mm nikon micro is not as sharp when pixel peeping, but will work better for you unless you deploy a couple of flashes so you can shoot at f22.
have you considered a wide angle micro?
 
I think you should go for a little wider angle but really you still need macro because they will look a lot better you could even try a straight 50mm and go to f18 which should be still sharp. And definitely use flashes

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So I am going to assume you want to buy the best camera and lens combination that will give you the best results for the lowest price.
So you can get the Nikon D3300 with the Nikon 40mm 2.8 Macro lens which in the right hands is a duo that is capable of producing totally professional macro pictures.

Nikon D3300 is simply a great camera and with 24MP is offering a lot of resolution and a great sensor for the money.
The lens Nikon 40mm 2.8 Macro is a very good and very sharp macro lens, I used to own it and MAN its sharp, true its not the best macro lens but then its very affordable and for your needs is very good.

Remember though that camera and lens no matter how good is totally useless if you don't know how to use it correctly to learning here is just as important as the equipment if not even better.

FYI you will probably need more equipment like maybe a white box, ring flash and more.

Good luck
 
Just about any descent macro lens will work for this. To get that tack sharp front to back focus you need to learn a post processing technique known as "focus stacking". Go to youtube and search "Focus Stack" . There are many good videos on this subject. I like this one
 
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I think the BEST choice would be a modern DSLR or mirrorless with a macro lens. I've used Nikon and Olympus most recently, and I think one of the Olympus PEN cameras and their macro lens would work terrific.
 
Thank you all for replies and advices!
Drive-By-Shooter, i have not decided yet, what kind of lens do i need. Flashes will be needed. We have tried to take photos with and without flashes. With flashes it was a lot better.

nathan cox, I am guessing that 50mm. would be better than 35mm. I am afraid that 35mm. lens could visually deform objects. I tried to search internet for comparison of photos made with those two lenses. There are a lot of portraits to compare, but i did not find any close-up objects to compare.

goodguy, i would like to ask about the lens you advised, Nikon 40mm 2.8 Macro. Of course, this question is also about any kind of macro lens. Is macro lens effective when taking photos from bigger distance? Not all my photos are close-ups. That is why i am not sure of buying a macro lens. The distance is minimum 50cm and almost never closer. My question would be, what could be maximum distance for taking photos with macro lens. Also, i add an example of photo where camera is maximum far from object, it is about 1,5 - 1,8 meters.
IMG_5559.jpg

I am looking for a lens, which could be used for both this kind, and also for closer (50 cm) distance.

greybeard, Focus stacking will surely help me a lot!

After thinking, what else i would like to do with that camera in the future (this purchase, i hope, will be for a long time), i have considered a full frame camera. Maybe Nikon or Canon, because these are easily accessible in my country.
 
I would be more concerned with how you plan on lighting the jewelry. Shinny things can be hard to photograph.


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I would be more concerned with how you plan on lighting the jewelry. Shinny things can be hard to photograph.
Now i have Two Kino Flo lights, 110W each. But i will need flashes too.
Not sure about a light box.. Now there are too many reflections on the objects, but when we experimented and tried to izolate object from all possible reflections, it really looked worse than with a lot of reflections. Looked like plastic instead of metal.. for me, this jewelry with natural reflections looks more "alive", maybe because i am used to see it with all those reflections on it. I will have to experiment more with light boxes, covering only a part of environment, to get more natural reflections.

Already tried to do focus stacking, just to see how it works: it works great! This is done from three photos. It should be more than three, but i just wanted to try.
sidabriniai_skambuciai_C.jpg
 
Focus stacking definitely bthe way to go
 
A copy of Light, Science and Magic would be a worthwhile purchace too.

With lenses just pay attention to the minimum focal distance, that's the closest you will be able to get to your subject and still get the lens to focus.

Don't forget some editing software like Lightroom or similar, it'll ley you correct any distortions in post.

50mm will be the focal length that retains the closest relationship between object size and what we see through our eyes so personally I'd use that as a starting point. Personally I find longer focal lengths more pleasing to the eye, wider than 50mm shots tend to look a bit squished to me.
 

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