Here's a lousy photo; please advise on how to improve it

[Orrex]

As I see it, there are a few main problems:

1. The contrast sucks.
2. The contrast really sucks.
3. Did I mention that the contrast really sucks?
and
4. The focus isn't the best either, but I'm less worried about that right now.

I promise that I'm not quite entirely inept at photographing jewelry, but it seems that the translucent beads on pieces like this really mess me up.

At present I'm limited in my choice of equipment; I have a Nikon Cool Pix 5600 which has served me reasonably well. I'm not looking for magazine cover-quality, but I'd like to take a shot that gives a better representation of the bracelet or necklace or whatever I happen to be snapping.

Do you photo gurus have any wise advice for achieving good results with translucent objects like this?

Your input is much appreciated!

[ManiacJoe]

1. What did you have in mind when you attempted this?

[Orrex]

2. I'd like to show the piece more or less as it looks

And not as a washed-out, over-exposed blob with poor contrast.

I played around in photoshop, which accounts for some of the crappiness, but the in-camera image itself has buckets of contrast problems, and if I can get a handle on these then I feel as though I can get a better result.

[Sherman A1]

3. Perhaps

trying a different angle? It appears the focus point is in the center of the piece, would it work better if the focus was at the front instead?

[NV Whino]

4. Photograph it on a piece of white Plexiglas (or frosted white Plexiglas)

Put the Plexi on some supports and light from underneath. That will get the translucent beads. You'll still need light on the piece itself—flash or photo lights or natural window light.

You're going to have depth of field problems at that angle. Either shoot straight down on it (boring), or take two shots (focus on front and middle, let the back go out of focus) and sandwich them in PhotoShop.

[Orrex]

6. Loving this idea!

I stopped by the most convenient location that seemed likely to stock this kind of plexi, but the friendly service professionals at Lowe's stopped just short of telling me that no such material exists or could ever exist. None of the five people I consulted had ever heard of smooth, translucent white plexiglas, and certainly it's nothing like Lowe's would stock!

They recommended painting regular glass or buying a sheet of clear plexi but not peeling off the protective frosted coating.

Yikes.

[NV Whino]

7. Try a sign shop if you can't find a shop specializing in Plexiglas

Another way to do it is a piece of white paper or tracing paper over glass. Depends on how much light you want to get through.

[Stevenmarc]

5. A couple of tutorials

http://www.learnmyshot.com/How-to-photograph-Shiny-Reflective-Objects-Silver-Chrome-Metal

http://www.learnmyshot.com/Light-Bulb-vs-Halogen-when-Photographing-Reflective-Metal

http://www.learnmyshot.com/Focus-Stacking-and-Bracketing-Technique-for-Marco-Jewelry-Photography

[Major Nikon]

8. Here's my thoughts

The first thing is I don't really see the contrast itself as a problem. I see the lighting as more of an issue (which certainly affects contrast). Improved lighting (more on this later) would improve the scene by bringing out more highlights in the silver parts and more color in the jeweled parts. Your background is going into saturation, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. For jewelry photography, usually you want to minimize anything involving the background or anything else in the shot for that matter, and driving it into saturation is one way to do that. One problem you have is the detail found in the cloth in the areas that are in focus. You don't really want that. A smooth cloth or paper, or having those areas go out of focus is a good way to deal with that. I like to use white poster board as a background. It's perfectly smooth, you can bend it, and best of all it's extremely cheap. Cloth attracts all sorts of lint, dust, hairs, and all sorts of other things that can show up in the in-focus areas and ruin the shot.

As far as focus goes, I don't really like to include out of focus areas in the foreground. The eye is naturally drawn to the foreground, so adding out of focus subjects in the foreground is a source of distraction. That's not to say that this is a hard and fast rule, but more often than not it's better not to include out of focus areas in the foreground. That's just my tastes, but I'm not the only photographer that feels that way.

As others have suggested, you can photograph small subjects on a piece of plexiglass. However, while this can produce dramatic effects, it can also produce it's own set of problems. Lighting becomes much trickier, and the plexiglass has to be pristine for the in-focus areas. Any scratch, crack, or mark will show up.

One of the easiest ways to photograph jewelry (or any small objects for that matter) is to build yourself a lightbox. It's ridiculously simple and cheap to do and you can find all the materials at your local hobby shop. This one is similar to the one I built.
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html

Instead of tracing paper, I found a transluscent poster board type material at my local hobby shop which I used for the sides and top. The example above shows a strobe used for the lighting. If you don't have a strobe you can use off camera (I don't think your camera has a hot shoe or PC connector than makes off camera strobe triggering practical), you can use a desk lamp or just about any other light source (or multiple light sources), you can come up with. If you use multiple light sources, make sure they are all the same type. In other words, if you use an incandescent light for one light source, don't use a flourescent for the other unless you're making a black and white shot. For whatever light source you use, adjust the white balance either on the camera or in photoshop until the white background is perfectly white.

[Orrex]

9. I like it!

As it happens, I may have access to the rare and expensive materials required to build that photo box. Perhaps I'll give it a try.

I'm trying to shoot pics for use on etsy, and for a long time they had a sort of de facto policy that items on a plain white background wouldn't get featured on the front page. As a result, I tried to produce a more interesting & textured background. Sometimes the results were good, but lots of times it wound up like you see here.

Nowadays nearly all of the front-page items are on a white, infinite-sweep background, so I guess it's time for me to revisit my procedure.

Thanks for the great info!

[Major Nikon]

10. The great thing about the lightbox is you can modify it to fit your tastes

I've seen people do all sorts of creative things with them. I've seen people use gel filter sheets on one side or the top to modify the color of the artificial light. You can use different colors of poster board underneath. Commercial lightboxes that you can buy often come with different colors for the backgrounds. I've seen some that had graduated backgrounds that were darker towards the back and lighter in the front. Some people paint their own backgrounds. You basically have a mini photo studio and you can use it in as many ways as your imagination allows.

Personally I just use mine with a piece of white poster board, because I mainly use it for taking photos of stuff I've sold on ebay. It's not exactly the most artistic use, but it does a great job for what I need.