Taking photos of gems

How does everyone take quality photos of there gems? Mine is never very good so looking for some pro tips

Firepanther said:

How does everyone take quality photos of there gems? Mine is never very good so looking for some pro tips

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With a lot of swearing and cursing

It ain't easy! Gems are one thing that just does not seem to want to be photographed. Dihusky knows a lot about the subject of photography/videoing.

I find that bright light diffused by a white, translucent plastic box is often the best. Many things can be successfully photographed sitting on a mirror - other stones just seem to thumb their noses at you no matter what. Lots of patience seems necessary. Thankfully we have digital cameras now, where I can delete the huge numbers of photos I take before I eventually come up with one that I'm satisfied with, or at least forced to accept that I probably won;t get a better one.

I find outside on a bright day with the stone in the shade gives a 1:100 chance of a good shot.

These photos I took outside in the sun with a tripod and Rom's good camera and macro lens. We used a black apron as a background.

With the macro lens usually it is only possible to get part of the specimen in focus, so each photo is comprised of several photos. You take several photos at different levels of focus and then import them into Adobe Photoshop using 'focus stacking'.







Photoshop focus stacking tutorial here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYA7wb2Vkz8

Manual focus, a tripod and a DSLR will make things a lot easier

Thanks for the advice everyone. Will try it all out and see if i can get a nice photo of my new 3ct faceted smokie