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Easy Jewelry Photography with a Digital Camera

How to Make My $15.00 Photo Studio
© by Cheryl Coccaro; all rights reserved.

Jewelry photography lighting can be tricky when using a digital camera. But every jewelry artist needs to be able take great photos for their website, promotional materials, and eBay or other auction sites.

When I first started selling on eBay I needed a better method for taking photos of my jewelry. I used a very popular Rubbermaid (TM) Cake Carrier, inverted it, and cut a hole in the top of it to insert my camera lens. First I tried putting rope lighting inside the cake carrier, secured with plastic ties. Then I tried putting the rope lights outside, on the top of the cake carrier.

This setup was partially successful for jewelry photography, but sometimes my pictures showed a circle of ring lights on the face of my stone.

The $15 Jewelry Photography Studio

The setup I use now is a Rubbermaid (TM) plastic file box with a lid, placed on a table by my back patio sliding door – it’s my $15 jewelry photography studio! This is an affordable studio you can easily put together yourself.

For the best pictures using this setup with your digital camera, see Jewelry Photography Success Tips for Your $15 Photo Studio.

These jewelry photos were taken in the afternoon when the light is the brightest. I used no additional lighting and no flash. The only editing done on these photos was resizing.

These next two shots were taken using my digital camera, in macro mode, on a tripod and no flash. I used the self timer mode because all my photos are shaky without using that wonderful tripod:

Commercially available setups like this for photographing jewelry with a digital camera include Cloud Dome and EZee Cube Photo Tent.

I bought the Rubbermaid (TM) file box in Walmart for $14.99, and I imagine it’s also available in most office supply stores. All I did was turn it on its side!

Cheryl Coccaro