So, you want to explore the beauty of your jewelry products with your customer. All right, that’s obviously a great idea to know the public reaction on how they appraise all your effort. However, for this, you have to take better photographs of your jewelry items.
But, the thing is, most people think they need a professional-grade DSLR camera to take a nice shot of their products. Surprisingly, you really don’t need it if you have a smartphone that can take better pictures.
And for your jewelry products, come on! It’s too easy. You just need to follow some basic tips while taking pictures of them with your phone.
Therefore, considering all these facts, here, I have come to you to provide some tips and tricks and also let you know some other information that will improve your photography quality.
So, let’s begin the article without any further ado!
Tips when taking photos of jewelry on your phone
You know your phone and your jewelry products better than I do, right? Well, don’t hesitate to use what you have, though having the best photography smartphone coming with a high-resolution camera will enhance the overall quality of your photographs.
So, having this one is a good recommendation for you. However, as you want to know specifically how you can take pictures of jewelry with your phone, here are some basic tips for you to follow.
- Prepare props & materials
- Set up lighting to light the jewelry items
- Focus on the products
- Select a macro lens to use as well as the correct aperture
- Edit your jewelry photographs
1. Prepare props & materials
The first thing you have to ensure before you are going to take pictures of jewelry with your phone is you have prepared all your props and materials.
It is one of the most important things to consider since without preparing them you can’t capture a good product image of your jewelry items.
Well, these include the following;
i) A natural light source
Using a natural light source is a good idea while taking photos of shiny jewelry products. This is because the jewelry items usually reflect bright light, especially when using camera flashes.
So, if you’re an amateur and want to take nice photos while also wanting to prevent harsh shadows on the backgrounds, you need to use soft diffused natural light.
Here, remember that you shouldn’t take pictures under direct sunlight; rather, you should keep your jewelry items near a window and take photos of them.
ii) White sheet/ fabric backdrop
Use a white sheet backdrop while shooting jewelry pictures since their reflective property can absorb all the other colors. Using this will prevent altering the color of the products.
Besides, you don’t have to expand this white sheet from your wall to wall. You will need just a piece of a white sheet, white paper, or white fabric fold it, and use it as a backdrop.
iii) Macro lens and tripod
To show off the details and beauty of your jewelry items such as color, stone, etc. you need to clip a macro lens onto your phone.
A macro lens will provide you with an optical zoom facility so customers can see the details of your jewelry products. Not only that but also it increases the quality of the photographs.
Along with this, you also will need a tripod to make your phone camera stable and fixed. Otherwise, your camera will shake and thus result in a blurred photograph of your jewelry products.
iv) A mannequin bust or a jewelry clipboard
Another important thing is a mannequin bust or a jewelry clipboard. To get a better photograph, you need to present the jewelry items in the best way as much as possible.
Therefore, you have to use these props that will give your jewelry products a beautiful and realistic shape.
However, if you don’t have a mannequin bust, you can use a jewelry clipboard to clip the jewelry while photographing. This clipboard will work as a mannequin.
Besides, one of the most significant advantages of this clipboard is you can create your own and also can adjust the size according to your jewelry.
2. Set up lighting to light the jewelry items
As I have said before you should use a natural light source for outdoor photography. However, you can use a lightbox for the primary photo setup where there is no light inside the box.
Besides, you can make your own lightbox using PVC pipe as well as parchment paper. Here, try to use the diffused lights offering natural-looking lighting. So, the color of your products can be reflected properly.
3. Focus on the products
If you want to take professional-grade photographs with your phone, focusing on the products is one of the most significant basics in jewelry products photography.
Pay attention to your product to ensure that your customer can clearly see the details. Otherwise, it will also result in a blurred photograph.
To focus your object with your phone, try to keep your distance while shooting your jewelry product’s photograph.
Try to experiment with different photography styles to capture the full potential and intricate details of the jewelry.
You can enhance your jewelry product photography and stand out in the e-commerce market with our comprehensive guide to essential product photography styles.
4. Select a macro lens to use as well as the correct aperture
For jewelry product photography, select a macro lens and then use the correct aperture. Remember, the aperture must be correct; otherwise, your focus will fall off.
Most people think that as they are using a macro lens, the aperture should be wider such as f2.8 or f4 which will make the jewelry product look brighter. Unfortunately, this is not the case in jewelry photography.
According to the professionals, using smaller, however, the correct aperture will be best for taking pictures of jewelry with your phone which provides full details while producing less bokeh.
To get the best results, you should choose an aperture such as f11 or f16 with Aperture Priority mode.
5. Edit your jewelry photographs
To increase the quality of your product’s photographs, you still need to edit them. By doing so, you can get an excellent photo of your jewelry items.
However, to edit the photo, most smartphones come with an edit function.
So, you can edit the photos by increasing or decreasing the brightness level, crop as well as rotating the photos, etc.
Besides, there are so many free editing apps available you can download to edit jewelry photos. Along with this, you can also add a filter which is really a great idea to keep a coherent theme if you want to post the photos on your Instagram profile.
Useful Apps
To improve and beautify the best quality photos, even a professional photographer also uses editing apps.
The reason is these editing apps not only enhance the image quality but also make your jewelry photographs really shine which will attract the customer, especially on social media.
So, once you have finished taking a picture of your jewelry products, don’t think that your journey of capturing photographs is over.
Your captured photos will look better if you use any one of the photo editing apps. So, considering the above facts, here, I have provided some photo editing apps to edit your jewelry photographs with your phone.
Snapseed
Snapseed is one of the most popular photo editing apps, especially for those photographers who want detail-oriented photos.
It provides a wide range of exposure, and colors and also comes with some excellent editing tools such as reshaping tools, masking tools, selective edit brushes, film-related filters, etc.
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is another popular editing app.
This will give you access to all your full-resolution files including the original and edited ones. It features dozens of tools such as exposure, selective edit, color, filters, etc. to edit with your phone.
Besides, this editing app will teach you how you can edit your photos like a professional photographer by providing a lot of interactive tutorials.
Adobe Photoshop Express
The editing apps Adobe Photoshop Express is usually available not only for iOS but also on Android.
Like the previous one, it also comes with similar features such as color editing, color contrast, exposure, filter, etc.
Most photographers use this editing tool for their jewelry product photography to make some basic editing including filter as well as texture selection.
VSCO
The VSCO editing app is also available for both iOS as well as Android devices that come with a paid version ($19.99/year) offering a 7-day free trial.
The filmic color filters of this app provide an artistic appearance to your jewelry products that will easily attract customers.
Therefore, if you are looking for an editing app to take pictures of jewelry with a phone application, the VSCO will definitely be a great choice.
Justin Parker is a professional photographer and has been in the industry since 2007. He attended the University of Georgia. Justin combines his passion for photography and his interest in writing to give life to this blog which talks about photography in order to help and inspire young photographers.
