Lens for jewelry photography?!

sarahess

Hi All-
I am new to this forum so hopefully I'm posting in the correct place.
I photograph jewelry and loose gemstones, but have been having trouble finding a lens that will give me better depth of field. Whether I am shooting a compact item like a ring, or a long one like a chain, I can only get a small part of the piece in focus. People who need these photos generally want the entire piece to be sharp. Are the professional photographers out there really using photomerge in Photoshop to achieve this??
I use a Canon T2i, and started with the standard 18-55mm, then recently upgraded to Canon's EF 100mm f/2.8 macro USM. Another photographer told me that lens would help with DOF, yet somehow I am still having the same problem!
I would really appreciate any advice as to a lens that would help me, OR a technique that would make the difference.
Thank you in advance,
Sara

ziggy53

Using a very small aperture, like f32 in this case, can yield deeper DOF, at the expense of ultimate sharpness. If you use Windows operating system, you may be able to stack multiple images using freeware such as CombineZP:

http://www.hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZP/News.htm
http://www.hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZP/Installation.htm

CombineZP can potentially allow almost unlimited DOF, at the expense of time and troubles of multiple images and processing required.

puzzledpaul

sarahess wrote: »

... Whether I am shooting a compact item like a ring, or a long one like a chain, I can only get a small part of the piece in focus. People who need these photos generally want the entire piece to be sharp ...

...I would really appreciate any advice as to a lens that would help me, OR a technique that would make the difference.

Assuming talking about single frames - rather than multiple frames focus stacked - then careful alignment / orientation of the object with respect to the lens axis will also help.

eg - if taking a pic of a necklace on a flat surface - then aligning the cam so's the lens (axis) is perpendicular to the surface that the necklace is lying on - will help.

If doing a lot of this type of shot, it might be worth getting (or making) some sort of rig - eg an old enlarger or copy stand ... and also consider using the cam in live view (if has one) mode via an external screen to (conveniently) obtain best focus etc.

pp

raptorcaptor

Here are some tutorials for taking jewelry shots with focus stacking.

http://www.photigy.com/focus-stacking-technique-using-adobe-photoshop-cs5-my-guest-post-for-www-learnmyshot-com/