"Please tell me, how do I take pictures of objects like watches and rings, etc, in order that they appear to be floating in mid air?"

The best way is to shoot them on a plain white background. You can then cut away any extra shadows during photo editing.

clothing is another thing that baffles me sometimes....especially dark colored clothing. what is a good way to take pictures of these...to get detail and so it doesn't seem so dark?

I have a Sony Mavica FD73 and I can't find a "white balance" control. It has EV numbers; will that help take pics of white objects?

Welcome back everyone!

Sorry for the complications yesterday, but camerajim is back and ready to pick up where we left off. At his request I have deleted all of his original content, so that he can repost the most accurate information today.

Please give him a few moments to get some of his content up and please feel free to ask away!

Ryan K
Community Development

In Part I of this workshop, I covered some basic approaches to taking photos for ebay auctions, including information on camera selection, camera controls you should know how to use, getting proper exposure and color balance, and information on lighting. I also demonstrated a few basic setups, using simple posterboard backgrounds and window light. Finally, I touched on a couple of tricks for shooting jewelry and other highly-reflective objects.

If you weren't here or haven't had a chance to read that workshop, it is still posted on this board. Here's the link...

Practical eBay Photography: Part I

Today, I'm going to start where I left off in Part I, with more on the "milk jug" technique, which is useful for shiny stuff like silverware and jewelry. After that, I'll get into some ideas for dealing with artwork, glassware and clothing.

I'll take questions in a while, but first I want to post the info I've prepared for today...

Now, here's that same fork, shot in just such a plastic "light tent"...



Both the highlights and shadows are smoother and there is no significant glare.

I cheated a little there, by adding a small piece of black paper inside the jug. That way, there were a few dark reflections, which help to distinguish this as a glossy finish, rather than an overall gold, satin finish.

And here's a detailed close-up...



That's actually the same image, which I shot with my camera set for its maximum image size and then cropped just this area.

I also use a larger plastic bowl I bought at a dollar store for such work, because it can hold larger pieces, but you can use any white translucent material which will diffuse your lights.

You can also use the same milk jug or light tent technique for shooting most jewelry.

Jewelry can be beautiful, but it's also one of the most difficult subjects for photography. On one small item, you can have many different surfaces, such as smooth gold or silver, faceted gems and even textured engraving or filigree. These all reflect and refract light in different ways. And, since light is what we're capturing when we take a photo, how we light each item will control how the final image looks.

Here's a detail shot of a gold necklace I sold a while ago on eBay...



I don't know about you, but I like to experiment with different color backgrounds for jewelry. I thought the contrast with this fabric background really brought out the gold look.

And, I think this blue background worked well for this watch...



Watches also have special lighting needs, mainly because of the flat crystals, which can reflect light and obscure the face. In this case, I had to again carefully place a small spot of black paper inside my light tent, so that would be the area reflected by the crystal.

After I got this image onto my computer, I also sharpened it a bit, in order to bring out the fire and sparkle of the diamonds.

I took a shot of that artwork with the camera on full automatic exposure and got this result...



Because of the lighting arrangement, there aren't any serious reflections, but the matte was a light gray, which came out sort of yellowish. That's because I didn't set the camera's white balance control and, on full auto, it got things wrong.

For my next try, I preset the camera's white balance control to tungsten, to match the type of lights I was using and got this result...



And that's pretty close to how that print looks hanging on a wall.

I would have liked slightly more even lighting, but in this case, I had placed the lights close to the artwork, so they would show up in the setup shot I posted above. In practice, you'd want to keep the lights far enough away to avoid any potential hot spots.