Adventures with Fuji.

 

 I have been playing in the garden with my camera.

I am trying to improve the photographs I take of my beads and jewellery for my Etsy shop. 

No, these first two are not mine, they are what I aspire to. Lovely white back grounds that show off the true colours of the beads and have a light modern feel to them. These are the work of jewellery designer and fellow 'Craft Pimp Team on Etsy' member, Lynn Davy, whose shop can be found here Nemeton

 

The back grounds are uncluttered and white, the image is clean and crisp, the beads and silver sparkle and invite you to look more.

My first attempts.

ISO 100, F8, 1/1000 Macro mode

Same as left with fill light added

As left but with highlight added

These first photo I took on auto mode in bright sunlight.  Colour wise the beads are very close to the actual beads themselves but the back ground looks so grey and dull. But adding fill light has simply washed out the photo and made it look flat.The highlight seems to effect the background and leave the beads alone which is preferable to the fill light effect.

As left with fill light added

ISO 100, F8, 1/500 Macro mode

As left with highlight added

I tried shutter priority next but found I was limmited with how slow a speed I could choose. probably because of the bright sunlight. Again the colours of the beads themselves are OK, but the background is dull and seems to absorb them in. Highlight works better than fill light in PP.

ISO 100, F8, 1/680 Macro mode

Aperture priority seems to be a bit of a fail. It wouldn't let me make it any smaller than F8. and so, although the shutter speed is a little faster, the result is not much different from shutter priority.

Fill light

ISO 100, F8, 1/500

Highlight

These I took after setting a custom white balance from the paper itself.  These are the best so far. The colour of the beads is the best yet but the background is still not white, the white balance change seems to of added a rosy glow.

 

 

 

And Finally...

ISO 400, F32, 1/50

Fill Light

High Light

These where taken by my friend using her Nikon SLR inside a light tent but still in the bright sun in the garden. I like the absence of deep dark shadows around the beads. Will use the light tent from now on.

I would still like a little more crispness.........

The Highlighted version, cropped and sharpened.

 I feel as if I have been staring at these beads for far too long now and anything I do will not make them look right. I will have another go soon, play with the ISO and light tent and see how that works out.