Macro lens advice for shooting jewelry product photography with the 70D

srascal · Nov 24, 2013

Hello and thanks in advance for your advice! I have a 70D that I do general blog and product photography with. I'm certainly not an expert, but I appreciate the fine quality of the camera and images, and work a lot in manual mode.

I've been offered a gig doing product photography of jewelry (earrings, bracelets, etc) and I want to invest in a macro lens and spend about $500. I don't fully understand the compatibility of the 70D with macro lenses. Can anyone offer some advice? I own the EF-S 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 IS STM kit lens and a decent tripod. I'm just lost in all of the new technology and compatibility, and don't want to buy the wrong lens.

Attached is a screenshot of the general product photography the jewelry artist is aiming for. Not sure if this factors in or not, but I'm skilled at Photoshop and will have no problem cutting out images onto a white background.

Thank you, Amy :heart:

toughsamurai · Nov 25, 2013

Try EF 100mm f2.8 Macro USM, if you are not stick to macro then you can also try the 50mm f1.4.

Overread · Nov 25, 2013

Picture removed - sorry but we only allow people to link to photos that are not their own and not upload/embed them into the forum.

As for what you need I would suggest:

1) Light Science and Magic - 4th edition. This is a book on lighting and its pretty much the reference book for what you need to do. You won't have to spend ages cutting images out to put them on a white background - you'll be able to simply light and take the photos in camera as you need them. Might take a little longer to setup initially but once done you'll save yourself hours in editing and get a professional clear result.

2) Lens wise any prime (single focal length - ie not a zoom) lens with "macro" in the name which is made for Canon EOS camera bodies will work - the 70D will fit EF and EFS lenses (which is pretty much everything made for Canon at present on the market).
Anything 60mm or longer would be ideal - any shorter and you'll have trouble lighting the subject as the lens will have to be very close to get the shot. Your current lens might also do well for framing this kind of photo and in a studio environment you'd be shooting at f8 or f10 so you'd easily have enough sharpness and depth of field.