Little trip away

I popped back up to Derbyshire to visit family and friends for a few days last week.

 I do love a trip back "home", just wish it was a bit nearer.

(that's a kite by the way!)

Got back to some exciting news on the house front... more of that later..

Have a good weekend!

Playing around with my camera - 2

Sorry to those folks not obsessed with talking photos of small shiny objects, BUT....

following on from my earlier post about playing with my camera. My next experiment was to change the white balance (WB) settings.This is one of the top tips I'd come across in the forums.

WHITE BALANCE

So with the lightbox out and the exposure upped slightly, I looped through all the WB settings.. and here goes:

Sunshine setting - (above)

 

Auto WB setting

 

inside light setting (cripes!)

 

flash

 

Shade

 

Personal setting

I think I like the personal one best,(but still not bright enough). To set the personal option I just had to point the camera at the white card, click set, and it figured it out for me.

 

 Anyway the matt black agate on sterling silver almond earwires are in the shop now...(click on the pic)!

I'm sure everyone else knows this  camera stuff already, and I'm really sorry to bore people who don't have there own shop, and will never need to take pics of their handmade jewellery....but it's been a useful lesson for me!

 

Playing around with my camera - part 1

Grrrr taking photos of my jewellery drives me mad!

I've been reading up lots of different tips on various forums, etsy, folksy etc.. but my trouble is that unless I actually have the camera there and try it out (which obviously I never do) I just never remember what I'm supposed to be doing (and to be honest, just can't be bothered to play around - too much to do, and too little time). But I know photos are one of the most important things, and so I decided to take some time to figure them out.

I know the key for good lighting is natural sunlight, and that has been in short supply until recently, so now that the sun is actually out I thought I'd have a play with my camera and show you what I came up with. The theory is if I write it down on my blog, I can refer back when I (inevitably) forget what I did!

A tutorial I would really recommend is Boo's Digital Photography Tutorial - especially useful for me as Boo also makes jewellery.

The key issue I have is the light, and so that's what I focused on. I want a really bright pic, BUT (and it's a big but) not overexposed which changes the colour of the gemstones, and makes the silver look white. When you're buying online you really need to have as accurate a picture of the item as possible.

BACKGROUND

I tend to use a plain white background because I like a simple, clean look. BUT I've heard that the best colour background to use is grey. Honestly, I've been looking around for a nice simple grey "thing" to take pics on for weeks now, and can't find anything that I like - where do you get a lump of slate? I tried the DIY stores, but nothing quite right. So I'm sticking to white for the time being.

LIGHTBOX

I thought it was about time I actually used the DIY lightbox I made ages ago (last time the sun was out!) I know natural sunshine is the best thing for photos, and to be honest I love the shadows that it makes, but it can make it difficult to see the item properly. I must admit it hadn't occured to me they were a problem until I read discussions in the forums on it. So I did a comparison....

This picture above is just in sunlight without a lightbox..

And this one is in the lightbox. (Obviously I'd crop it etc.. for the real version, but this is just to show the light!).

Hmmm..... I think I know which one I prefer.  Doing this comparison and seeing things side by side is really useful for me.

I'm really glad I made the lightbox now! And it really didn't take long to do. I also had a old cereal box and put crinkled up silver foil on it to reflect light back onto the earrings. Takes seconds to do, and I think it really helped.

Final trick - on this second picture I also changed the exposure setting (so easy to do - I moved it up to +1) Makes a huge difference!

The next experiment was to play with the White Balance.... pictures of this to come in part 2.