Jewelry Photography Tips: How to Use Your Phone

A professional jewelry photographer will like to have a stable light set up, tripod, macro lenses and reliable post production ready for clicking photos with a smartphone. Let’s look at the tips on how to take professional pictures with an iphone or android.

Make an elegant set up for photography

I am obsessed with a vintage setup for taking jewelry photos. But as a photographer, staying open to everything will never dishearten you. So, you can try different settings, explore and create beauty from different perspectives. Sometimes, your client would have a special direction which you need to follow accordingly.

I always keep a table and jewelry display mannequin ready to shoot my jewelry. To make the jewelry pop go for a beige, mauve, mint, brownish tableware. Keep it totally plain to avoid obstruction for your eyes and that is also important when you are clicking with your phone.

Having a grip for a photoshoot with a smartphone is mandatory. You can’t afford a blurry photo for camera shake but you can afford a tripod!

Use single type of light and diffuse light to avoid reflection

Sometimes a natural light source can make your jewelry photo shine. But professionally speaking, arrange a little studio setting. Set the light as much as you can with a lightbox. Because direct light will create reflection and glare in your jewelry photos. Also, flashlights are a big NO.

Lit up your set with one or two or three lights of the same color and type to avoid reflection. You might need to defuse the light by using a light cone, box or cards, or changing the position of the jewelry piece. I have a detailed write up on reflective product photography. Go through it for a proper lighting idea.

Create Alluring Framing for Jewelry Photography

Jewelry photography needs a clean and uncluttered background. Our focus is the piece of jewelry, we want to concentrate on the details of the creation.

Do not go for other accessories or props to decorate the framing. It does not help you to achieve a professional look. Just focus on the product and make a clear composition, that’s it.

One vital part is, place your jewelry in an appropriate angle. Trying out different angles will take you to the right place eventually. Try to cover every part of the piece thoroughly.

Keep the negative space as much as it takes the jewelry to pop. The negative space in photography means the empty part of the photo. For example, in a photo of a necklace on a table. The negative space is the table top and the positive space is the necklace itself. Keeping much negative space is being popular among photographers since it grabs attention while a viewer is scrolling through any website. But for jewelry photography, you might not want to follow this trend always.

How to Take Pictures of Jewelry with Phone

The best way to photograph jewelry is mostly macro photography. So you need to use the macro setting in your phone camera. Macro setting helps to get a close up photograph of the statement piece. You will see the macro icon with a tulip flower.

So once you turn on the camera and look at the piece through it, if you think it looks a bit darker you can fix it by increasing or decreasing the exposure, brightness, contrast. You will have to tap on the focus point to focus exactly where you want. And then click photos.

I recommend setting the timer and putting your phone on a tripod to avoid camera shake. Otherwise, everytime you click, you will see a camera shake. But if you have a steady grip and set timer, you can make your hands rest a little bit as well.

Get Clip-on Macro Lenses

Does your phone’s macro lenses give you a tough time? Or If you are interested in investing a little bit more for better photos, I know something! Yes, get little clip-on lenses and adjust it on your phone. This investment will speak louder, trust me!

The Xenvo Pro Lens Kit is one of the most loved among mobile photographers. My vote also goes for this one to take professional pictures with any smartphone .

Focus Stack if Needed

What happens when every part of the statement piece does not come out perfectly focused? It happens because of the limit of the depth of field. Sometimes your camera setting cannot allow you to achieve a deeper depth of field to capture the whole subject. So doing focus stacking you can blend several images to get a perfectly focused item. There you will click multiple photos focusing different parts of an item and then blend the focused parts in photo post processing.

If you are not an expert photo editor that might sound difficult to you. But you can find professional help for focus stacking service. Some professional jewelry retouching providers like Color Clipping offer focus stacking for free.

Work on Jewelry Retouching

One of the vital parts of writing about how to photograph jewelry is to remind you about jewelry photo retouching. You need to retouch jewelry to fix all the flaws captured in the photo. In photo retouching the retouchers remove the scars, fingerprints, dust and all because macro lenses never spare an invisible spot. Apart from removing spots, you need metal polishing, color correction, fixing white balance, background and many more.

Phone Camera Settings for Jewelry Photography

Let’s have a little tips on setting your phone’s camera to understand how to take professional pictures with iphone or android better!

Adjust the white balance

Go to the WB option to choose the white balance that matches the vibrancy of your set. You can choose among the presets and also customize until it looks better in your eyes. Don’t forget to apply the suitable photographic style if you are photographing jewelry with iphone. Usually the standard style is better, but that too depends on the light source you are working in.

ISO, Shutter, Exposure

Fix the ISO that looks suitable, preferably below 800. Go to S for Shutter Speed, preferably 1/125; slower than this may result in blurriness due to camera shake. To fix EV for exposure value, tap the exposure button and touch where the jewelry you want the exposure and let the camera decide the best EV. lock it, and all good.

Auto Focus

Touch and tap the circular focus button to direct it to the product to focus for a crystal clear photo. Or, if you think it needs to go better, do it manually with the F button.

Use Grid Line and Level

Make sure to adjust the grid and level for a straight image outcome.

Shoot in RAW format

Always click the jewelry product photo in RAW format because you need to edit your jewelry photos.

Shoot in the highest resolution

Shoot the photo in the best resolution for a crisp print.

Keep your phone fit

Make sure your camera lenses are clean and the battery is fully charged, and don’t forget to mount your phone on a tripod. Don’t forget to activate image stabilization.

How to Select the Best Phone for Photographing Jewelry

Choosing the right phone refers to the quality of your phone camera. Of course, you can’t expect a professional-looking image with a low-quality camera. So choose a camera with a larger sensor, a good megapixel, giant storage, lens choice, and file type.

Charging speed is another factor for me. And that reminds me of the Xiaomi 11T phone. It has an extremely fast charging capacity with 120 charging. It has a crazy camera and storage setting for best jewelry photography as well. Its main camera comes with a 108 mp sensor, an ultra wide angle lens of 8 mp and a tele macro lens of 5 megapixels. I Love how the camera captures photos clearly in low light as well.

If you are an iPhone user you might be wondering about IPHONE 13 PRO MAX. Well the camera, storage and all functions definitely are superb and absolutely perfect for jewelry photography. With the 2 centimeters focal distance and auto macro detecting capacity is worth every Jewelry Just point the camera close at the jewelry and the ultra wide camera will be activated automatically. The 12 mp ultrawide sensor allows more light and faster autofocus. As you place the camera close to the subject and detect the focus point perfectly.

Upshot

You are not supposed to capture products only with a high-end professional camera. Your sleek and slim smartphone can do the magic as well! Just decide what you want to see in the image. Picture it in your mind, including the setup and apply the tips you found while learning about how to take pictures of jewelry with phone.