Jewelry - Globe vs light tent

[Don Kondra]

Greetings,

A couple of quick shots to show the difference between using a light tent or a globe for shooting small shiny stuff.


Please forgive the subject matter, the ring is 35 years old and in dire need of a cleaning/polishing

Both shots with two Alien Bees B1600 strobes with softboxes, E-30, 12-60mm + ec20.


Not very scientific as no attempt was made to process the raw files identically but I did not change any of the reflections, ie., burn/dodge/clone...

First up is a 28" cube from Alzo Digital, ~ $50 which includes a gray, white and black seamless paper backdrops.

In this shot you can see the window caulking I used to position the ring on white foamcore. More care could definitely be taken for this...

Next is a 16" acrylic globe with a 5" opening purchased from a local lighting company for $65. A less expensive but smaller option is 10" glass globes with a 4 1/4" opening available at local building supply stores for less than $15.


Note - the camera/lens combo in this image was not the one used for the shot, I was testing a 50-200mm lens and as expected the minimum focusing distance makes this lens inappropriate for this work.

Note - perhaps a little oversharpened but Photobucket trashed it

Cheers, Don

 

[Markw]

That's interesting. The globe looks MUCH better, but it kind of makes sense. The globe is much smaller when compared to the tent, with a smaller hole. Both of which leads to more trapped, highly concentrated light.

Great demonstration!
Mark

 

[Don Kondra]

Thanks Mark,

The one thing I do like about the tent shot is how the top of the ring especially picks up on the gray backdrop.

In order to achieve that effect with the globe I'll have to see if the paper needs to be on the inside or not....

Cheers, Don

 

[Don Kondra]

I reshot with the globe on a gray T-shirt, added a strip of gray paper to the back on the inside and another small piece at the front just out of frame.

This is much closer to what I envisioned being able to do with the globe.

Cheers, Don

 

[Don Kondra]

And one last time

I removed the gray paper from the inside of the globe and traded softboxes for 7" reflectors.

Haven't made it to town to purchase some glass so I substituted black seamless paper.

Ran out of steam before I thought to add some tin foil under the stones. The other thing to try is shoot two exposures and process in layers.

Which begs the question, should you highlight the stone or show it more as it would appear on your finger ?

Cheers, Don

 

[RacePhoto]

Interesting ideas. I already have a few globes, plastic, cheap from a building and home supply store. I was using them over slave strobes as diffusers for shooting food, on location. Now they are over twist lamps, under a sheet of Lexan, for backlighting. I never thought of putting things, inside them as the same effect and a light tent. Cool idea, kind of like a desktop cyclorama? I wonder how a big globe would do, and the advantage is lighting from the bottom as well as the sides. Have to try this. THANKS!

This is backlighting on a white sheet of polycarbonate sheet. Globes under it, are covering twist bulbs.

Just one more use for the globes.