MK Digital Direct's Blog

Hi,

This post contains the answers to the most commonly asked customer questions on the topic of how to shoot high-quality product and jewelry photographs with their point-and-shoot digital camera using our Product Photography Lighting Systems and our catalog producer and photo editing software.

If you’re not one of our customers, you may still follow the directions of what you should be doing to shoot quality photos. Yet, without the necessary photography equipment, you will must likely be unable to achieve the type of quality photo you’re looking for.

HOW TO GET THE RIGHT FOCUSING?

1. Press half way the shutter speed button and hold it
2. You will get a sound and a green square on top of your item
3. If you get a yellow one means you are to close. Rise the camera up or zoom out
4. After you get the green square press all the way down to take the picture

HOW TO GET THE ITEM COMPLETELY ON FOCUS FROM THE BOTTOM TO THE TOP? (DEPTH OF FIELD)

1. Instead of focusing on the top center of the item (Example: a ring)
2. Move the camera with your hands to the side of the ring (1/3 down form the bottom, on the shank)
3. Get the focusing there, and after you get the green square on top of the ring
4. Without releasing half way your finger, move the camera back to have the ring on the center of the picture and then click all the way to take it.

Read more: More detailed explanations inside our Photography Startup Guide (Expand Step 4.4)

HOW DO I GET A WHITE BACKGROUND?

1. Lay down the item on the bottom of the light box
2. Take one picture with the shutter speed (The 1/XXX number) that provides you with the best balance between an image (in your LCD screen) that looks ‘Too Dark’ or’ Too Light’, simply based  on your judgment from what you see with your eyes.
3. Take another 2 pictures, one shutter speed number up, and one down (A darker photo and a lighter photo)
4. Choose the one that’s a  little bit darker (or the original photo you thought was best – form step #2)
5. Go to our Catalog Producer Software, Import the images and open the one you’d like to edit.
6. Add 7 to 14 points of brightness
7. Add 7 to 14 points of contrast
8. Add 20 to 25 points of sharpening

HOW TO TAKE PICTURES OF WATCHES?

1. Get our tilting kit, which contains various accessories for positioning a watch for photographing it in various ways.
2. Place your watches in one of the provided watch stands, or tilting stands.
3. Tilt the watch to a position in which the glare of the glass is now shown in your camera screen
4. Take the picture from the top section of the front opening of the lighting systems at a 45 degrees angle.

Read More: Check out our step-by-step guide on how to photograph watches.

HOW TO AVOID THE BLACK REFLECTION SPOTS FROM THE CAMERA?

1. Attach your camera on the magnetic bracket on top right of your photography lighting system (Not available on the Gem-eBox)
2. Place your  item on the left back area of the lighting system.
3. Photograph the item from an angle (like 45 degrees) where the item reflects the white walls around it instead of the camera above it. Think of the way that light travels, and the best how you can move your camera so that your items reflects everything but the camera opening.
4. Because we there are white walls all around the item, you will avoid most of the get black reflection spots.

HOW TO AVOID REFLECTIONS ON SHINY ITEMS, LIKE SILVER OR GOLD?

1. Choose your lighting options: If you lighting system has individual light switches for each of the fluorescent light panels (Right, Left, Bottom, Back) simply play around with the  switches until to get the desired lighting. For example, you might want to switch the left or right panel, to decrease the light intensity and add depth to your item.
2. Avoid other reflections: If your lighting system includes halogen lighting on the left and right panels, you may cover them with a 4″ x 4″ piece of paper so that you have full white walls.
3. Play with the position of the item inside, sometimes just moving it, will change the outcome of the picture

WHY DO I NEED THE HALOGEN LIGHTS FOR?

1. If you have red stones like rubies, purple stones like amethyst or orange stones, you need to use halogen light
2. Do another custom white balance on your camera with the f stop at 8.0 and the shutter speed at 1/60

CAN I MIX THE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS WITH THE HALOGEN LIGHTS?
No, you can’t , we never mixed them because you will not get the right color of the jewelry

WHAT ARE THE LED LIGHTS FOR?

1. To get sparkles and scintillation on the diamonds and stones
2. To make the jewelry more vivid , more alive, like en 3D

HOW CAN I LOOK MY ITEMS FLOATING IN WHITE?

1. You can take them from the top against the white light underneath
2. Get one of our infinity curves to take the picture from the front and will looks beautiful

HOW CAN I GET A COLOR BACKGROUND WITHOUT CLEANING THE PICTURES IN ADOBE PHOTO SHOP?
Just lay down anything you like as a background inside the box, like placemats, paper, stones, flowers, tiles, acrylics etc.
HOW CAN I GET A SHADOW OF THE ITEM ON THE BOTTOM OF THE PICTURE?
Get our black and white reflective acrylics or just lay down a piece of glass inside the box

Hope this information helps you get a better grasp on how to photograph products using our photography lighting systems.

Take care

Ezequiel Nacach
Vice-President
MK Digital Direct

enacach How to do it

Hello,

This is a quick review of how to quickly setup your digital camera in order to begin shooting product photographs inside an enclosed photography setup, like our photography lighting systems. For the full step-by-step guide, check our Photography Startup Guide.

1. Perform a Custom White Balance. How?

• Set the camera to manual mode
• Fix the aperture to F8.0 (Point-and-shoot cameras) or F16  (DSLR cameras)
• Set the shutter speed to 1/100
• Go to the custom white balance menu or settings on your camera (read your manual)
• Turn ON only the fluorescent lights of your photography system
• Point the camera down towards the bottom platform of your enclosed system (make sure there is no items inside)
• Press the button in your camera (that your manual indicates you to use)  to measure, or perform the white balance of your camera.

2. Attach a close-up lens (+2 OR +4) around or on the front of your lens or lens adapter.

3. Set the ISO to the smallest number in your camera (80 or 100)
4. Turn on the Macro Mode (The Tulip/flower icon)
5. Choose your photos to be of ‘Fine’ resolution and the largest size (in Pixels)

That you get you going quickly,

If you are a visual learner, then checkout our ‘Camera Setup in 10 Easy Steps‘ article, which has lots of photos and step-by-step information.

Hope that helps,

Ezequiel Nacach

enacach How to do it

Fellow Photographers,

The best way to capture the real color of your silver jewelry is to lay down a piece of aluminum foil (or another silver looking background) underneath the piece you’d like to photograph, so that it matches the silver color of your item by reflecting the aluminum background on your item.

If shoot your silver jewelry with any other color background or if you use the white lit platform on our photography lighting systems, you will get the reflections of that color on the metal. Which may make your silver look lighter (more white) than it really is. For this reason, we want a silver-looking background color to match the color of the silver  jewelry.

If you choose to use aluminum foil you can choose between a mate finishing or a shiny one, the aluminum foil comes on both .

Learn more jewelry photography tips here:

Checkout some of our product photography accessories here

enacach How to do it, Jewelry Photography

Photographing Jewelry and Collectables with MK Lighting Systems

Thursday, February 25, 2010  |  3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Where: B&H NYC Superstore – 420 9th Ave, NY New York 10001

Mike Deutsch of MK Digital Direct will be demonstrating the use of the MK lighting systems to achieve consistent and beautiful results easily of jewelry and collectables. Mike will cover in this presentation; setting the cameras custom white balance, proper positioning of the jewelry, creating catalogs and web page ready images. Watches, bracelets, rings and other items will be photographed during this presentation. MK Digital Direct is the worldwide leading manufacturer of product photography lighting systems. MK Digital lighting systems enhance the beauty of jewelry, gifts, collectibles, eBay products, forensics and more.

mkdigitaldirect How to do it, Jewelry Photography, MK News

HI everybody:

Today I will show you how to send your pictures using your email account to possible customers, vendors, fiends etc.

Things you need to have.

An email account for example: Hotmail, yahoo mail, Google mail, or your own company email. If you do not have one already setup, get one is free and also very easy to sign for it.

On your computer, you need to have one folder containing your pictures or images. If you do not have one already, create one on your desktop. On windows just right click your mouse at your desktop and select new, folder, select the name, and that’s it.

Basic Steps

I am assuming that you already have beautiful pictures saved on your photography or picture file, if not, do not send them, you don’t want to share ugly pictures with everyone  on the web, fix them or if you can’t take new ones. The quality of pictures you send needs to be of  the same quality of those you will receive from someone and  buy a product from them because the picture invite you to do it.

If you have beautiful pictures let’s move forward.

Open your email software; I will work with hotmail for example.

First select New to create a new e mail.

Second on the TO: selection space, write the correct email address of the people you want to send the e mail. You can add more than one e mail address if you need, and send copies of the mail to somebody else.  Just click Cc: on the top screen.

Very important fill the subject line with brief information of your e mail. Many people erase their e mails without even open them if the comes empty.subject  write all the information you need to supply to the person(s) receiving the mail(s).

Third, at the top of the page select the word Attach, this will open a small box below the Subject selection space that reads Browse.

Fourth, Click on the Browse box and look for archive that contains the image (s) you want to send. You can select them the by the description you wrote for the picture, or by the image itself. Click on it twice to select it, if you need to send more than one image repeat the Browse steps.

Fifth, click the send button and that is it.

If you have problems sending large image size pictures you need to reduce them prior to send them. Use the software you use to adjust the picture quality to reduce the image. Always keep the original file and reduce a copy of it so you do not lose your large image.

Good luck

Ruben Neuman

neumanr How to do it

Hello to every one:

Today I want to share on a simple way to obtain beautiful pictures of rings using simple and cheap easy to found products.

Of course you need to have a good Photo-eBox lighting system, and a reliable digital camera.

If you need more information on the type of camera you need, the proper accessories and a good all-in-one photography lighting system please

Let’s start.

Materials we need.

1-    Any non reflective piece of fabric. Sued, velvet, heavy cotton, etc.

2-    A piece of Styrofoam.

3-    One plant decoration pin, or any pin used to hold jewelry to portable displays.

4-    A ring.

5- Some decorative items if you want to decorate your picture.

Here you can see the 3 items used for this picture

Steps for how to photograph a ring with a textile background

1. Place the fabric inside the photo e box; you can use just a partial section of it

2. Cover the Styrofoam with part of the fabric. So you can hide it

3.Using the pin hold the ring in place by pushing it trough the fabric until is secure on the Styrofoam.

Decorate the surroundings, zoom in and arrange your picture, adjust your shutter speed to properly light the picture and…. “click”  you have a nice picture in seconds.

You can retouch, crop, and arrange the image, to be used in your web page, catalog or mailers using various software’s. Or one provided with the photo e box.

Finished Photograph of the Ring

Experiment with several fabrics, rings, positions of the rings; make one or two level pictures etc. do whatever you like this is your picture and you are the creator of it.

Many people worry that all pictures on the web need to have a white background that is not true a dark background will always give you more contrast to your jewelry and more presence remember when you sell online:

You are selling pictures not jewelry

So have fun and sell more.

Ruben Neuman

neumanr Jewelry Photography