5 important tips for taking better digital jewelry photography

Learn to focus your camera in order to ensure your images turn out sharp. It is often difficult to focus accurately with an auto focus digital camera, especially when you are shooting smaller objects. Make it a point to carefully read your owner’s manual and comprehend the functionalities of your auto camera. Most of the digital cameras are designed in such a way that they focus easily on larger objects but are difficult to focus on smaller objects. It’s best to put your camera in the spot focus mode. Spot focus gives you more control on the part of the scene the camera actually focuses on.

1. A tripod is good to use.

Motion blur can be caused with the slightest movement whilst taking a picture. Motion blur becomes more noticeable as you get closer to an object. For sharper images a reasonably priced tripod will make a huge difference. It makes sense to invest in a good quality tripod. Use the camera’s built-in timer in order to minimize the camera shake or if your camera has the feature of remote shutter release, make sure to use it.

2. Ensure that your camera is in aperture priority mode.

It is good to set your camera in aperture priority mode if you want to cover the largest area of your subject. Set the aperture to the highest number. This becomes even more important when you get closer to the subject.

3. Try to use soft lighting.

Do not depend on your camera’s built-in flash to give you good results for product photography. It will rarely do so. When you use soft lighting, use a light tent like Cubelite or EZcube. You can also shoot outside on an overcast day or even use a soft box for this purpose.

4. Make use of editing software.

You can make your product photography considerably easier by using a reasonably priced software like Photoshop Elements or ACDSee. It will seem to you that it is faster to use an image exactly the way it is shot. But in actual effect, it is rather difficult to shoot an image with precision just the way you would like it to appear in its final form. The software for image editing let’s you sharpen the image, crop it, adjust its exposure and also resize it, all this in less than 60 seconds!

Sharpness of the image and correct lighting make the biggest difference between an amateur’s and a professional’s product snapshots. Steps 1, 2 and 3 will assist you to improve sharpness in your images and finally step 4, will help in improving your lighting. You can further improve your image by spending some time editing it. All these steps may seem very basic and you may be tempted to ignore them. On the other hand, if you actually follow them, step by step, you will see a noticeable improvement in the quality of the photos you take.