AboutJohn and Chris Expertise We are both professional photographers, with over 15 years experience. We can answer questions about photography, as well as questions about cameras from the 60s to 90s. (extensive 35mm, quite a bit of other formats.) Please, no darkroom questions.
Expert: John and Chris Date: 10/18/2006 Subject: Photographing jewellery
Question I have a canon powershot S3 digital camera.(6.0 mega pixels). The questions I have are :
1) Can I take good quality closeup images of jewellery and gemstones from this camera.
2) If not then can you recommend some real good camera specially for jewellery photography.
3) What camera settings and lightingshould I use to photograph jewellery.
4) Can I get good images from this same camera If I just change the lens ( If yes which lens should I buy)
regards
Mithun rao
Answer Mithun,
1. Generally speaking yes. It depends mostly on what your end use of the image is as to wether or not the camera you have is the right one.
2. The best way to do it, if you were looking to make high quality prints would be to use a digital SLR, (an example would be the Nikon D80) a macro lens and macro flash.
3. I can't really give you camera settings and lighting because the camera settings will vary with the light you use and the effect you want. And I can't give a specific lighting set because that would depend on the effect you want. Plus, I don't know what you have for lights. Generally speaking you would want soft, even illumination. And most folks want a lot of depth, so you would use a small (closed down) aperture.
4. You can't change the lens on the S3. You can add lens to the front of the one that is built on though. If you can't get close enough for to suit your needs with the macro mode on the camera, Canon makes a macro lens you can put on the front called the "250D".
