Copyright © 2013 Deborah M. Zajac  All Rights Reserved

I had the whole day free so I played with my continuous lights and SB600 Speedlight. I bought a couple of pieces of jewelry recently  which started  me thinking about Jewelry Photography and lighting.  I am still trying to get more accomplished with external lights and photography and I hope this exercise will help me grow in that area.

After studying lighting techniques, and jewelry styling for a couple of days I got my props together and by  late this morning I was ready to start taking some photos.

I still don’t have the lights quite right for the sparkle I want.  I’m looking into getting a Dazzle Bulb for the future.  I also need another high wattage bulb. I’d also like to add some plexiglass sheets to my kit as well;  I see a trip to the hardware store in my near future.

This is my tabletop set up. I set up on the kitchen table with a white sheet, white foam core board, and my lights. I had to hunt for something to tie dental floss on to be able to hang the jewelry and this is what I came up with. My daughters old high-school locker shelf. It came in handy after all these years of non-use.
I took the photo of the set up with a Nikon D300s and 24mm f2.8 AF-D and on-camera flash.

Nikon D700| Nikkor 85mm f1.8 AF-D, and Nikkor 28-105mm AF-D| Continuous lights 1 full Daylight camera right, 1 soft light bulb camera left, SB 600 camera front

I did all the photo development/processing in Photoshop CS6.  All my processing starts in Adobe Camera RAW then I moved to Photoshop for levels adjustments, output sharpening, cloning out the thread that held the ear-rings and necklace, cleaning up dust spots, and adding my watermark then resizing for the web.

P.S. Several times today I wished I had a macro lens!