I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has
offered help and advice on taking digital images. I would like to
give a special thank you to Mark Liccini who made it clear to me that
the best gemstone pictures are taken in natural light and that
garnets need direct light. Our picture taking clicked after his
email. I really believe this is so with some exceptions.
Some of our findings on taking gemstone pictures by a window are the
following: Drusies are definitely best portrayed in natural light ,
especially the black ones. (some of mine were taken with a scanner
and will be reshot with the digital camera) Viewing the larger picture
or details is best if a digital camera is used. (the scanner did not
do justice if we needed to see the larger picture) In the AM pictures
were taken by the NE window In the PM pictures are taken in the SW
window. With faceted stones and some cabochons we must sometimes take
a white card or paper and move it around to deflect the light and
obtain the proper color and intensity.(This can sometimes take 5
minutes or longer) Purple tanzanite’s do best in artificial light. We
could not bring out the purple highlights in natural light. We only
use the photo editor to reduce the pictures, I personally do not like
to play with the colors. We did have to move the camera at different
angles for every shot to obtain a proper image and color. If we were
photographing the same material the camera was fine at the same
angle. The camera was held by hand, since we had to keep changing
angles. Many of the colors are accurate however there are also many
that were difficult to get accurate colors (especially with the
faceted stones), although we found different times of day sometimes
made a difference in the accuracy of color on a stone. We also feel
that taking 15 to 25 pictures at a time was best. Any more resulted
in burnout.
I hope this additional will be helpful to other orchid
members out there as it certainly helped us. Everybody’s feedback
was greatly appreciated. Good Luck to all.