Light Box for Jewelry

[Don Kondra]

Check out Forrest Tanaka on YouTube. He's king of the low fi school of tabletop shooting and gets some good shots without expensive specifically-designed-for type equipment. In this vid, he shoots with two light stands, a blue backdrop and a couple of clamps.

YouTube - ForrestTanaka's Channel

And how does that relate to shooting jewelry ?

Cheers, Don

BTW - Home Depot has a 10" white glass dome with a 4 1/4" opening for ~$12. I chose to purchase a 16" white poly globe with a 5" opening from a local lighting company for $65.

 

[jberzins]

Hello,
I did not think about using the glass dome idea Don, I will suggest that to her. I really do appreciate all of your help. My wife is fully able to take good pictures, this was more of an issue of ease and speed. As you can imagine, she is not just taking pictures of a couple of pieces, she is taking pictures of many pieces with limited time. She really just wanted a light box that would diffuse the light and take a quick picture and then another and then another, etc. That is why I referenced the one light box setup, is portability and easy setup. Of course if your time is not limited to several minutes here and there you can really set things up and try different lighting, not the case with us. Again, I really do appreciate all of the input.

 

[Robin Usagani]

try using a milk plasti jug. I heard good results with it.

 

[Offhand]

Same principles. Shooting small reflective things in front of a backdrop. Just seemed to follow since he shot without spending a lot of money and with a bare minimum of setup.

Check out Forrest Tanaka on YouTube. He's king of the low fi school of tabletop shooting and gets some good shots without expensive specifically-designed-for type equipment. In this vid, he shoots with two light stands, a blue backdrop and a couple of clamps.

YouTube - ForrestTanaka's Channel

And how does that relate to shooting jewelry ?

Cheers, Don

BTW - Home Depot has a 10" white glass dome with a 4 1/4" opening for ~$12. I chose to purchase a 16" white poly globe with a 5" opening from a local lighting company for $65.

 

[Don Kondra]

The reason a globe or light tent is generally recommended for jewelry is to minimize reflections from the surroundings and/or hot spots from the lights.

You could set up a backdrop and bounce the lights off reflectors from the sides. Bouncing the light evens out the highlights and the object will pick up the color of the reflector used.

It does sound like the perfect solution would be a 28" light box. The one from Alzo is ~$50, comes with black, gray and white seamless. Sets up in seconds and is easily folded up for storage.

Then a couple of clamp type work light reflectors ~$12 and 5500k CF bulbs.

The opening of the box is likely going to make set up faster than working through a 4 1/4" hole

Cheers, Don