good camera for jewelry

I will be buying a digital camera, to photogragh my jewelry, very soon. I want a camera that will serve my needs, but I would prefer not to spend a fortune on it. Any suggestions? Is there any way that I can ask a dealer to se what kind of picture, a given camera might yield. I need digital slides both for show applications and for my web site.

Cairenn, the Howling Artist

DSLR body with a macro lens. Most DSLR bodies come as part of a kit with an all purpose zoom do everything mediocre but not anything great. The macro lens is usually the manufacturer's sharpest and best corrected lens. I use Nikon's 60mm macro lens on my 10 megapixel D200. That's an ideal combination. But you can get a less expensive 10 megapixel body now. Canon has a similar focal length macro lens also. Just keep in mind that all the lenses on DSLR bodies have an approximate 1.5 magnification factor.

If you want to get a compact consumer camera, look for close focusing capabilities of approximately an inch. The close focusing should be at the mid range or telephoto end of the zoom. Close focusing at the wide end of the zoom might lead to a wider view at the camera to subject distance which means that you won't be able to fill the frame with the object without cropping afterwards.

Larry Berman
Digital Jury Services
ZAPP Helphttp://www.zapplication.org/phorum/register.php[www.zapplication.org]

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I have done just fine with a panasonic lumix 7mp camera. I use a tripod and screen diffused 6100K CFL illumination. Unless the piece is very small, I can a full screen image with plenty of pixels to spare to crop to this site's specifications. In short, for most of my stuff, the 7mp image gives me all the image data I can use. I use an early version of photoshop to do any needed color temp management and cropping to spec. It was several hundred less than a DSLR and current models come with Leica optics. My entirely homegrown images have gotten me into several shows, so they must be adequate.

I checked various show websites out and adjusted the image setup to yield similar results. With digital, you can take as many as you need to get the image right.

Cool, a year and a half later.

I just posted again to the same question on the American Craft Forum:

The best option to photograph jewelry is a DSLR with macro lens. A point and shoot with good macro can do it but they usually tend to have the macro setting at the wide end of the zoom which means you'll be within an inch or two to fill the frame. It's better to shoot from further back so as not to block your lighting. That means a DSLR.

For the DX sensor crop body which 99% if the DSLR's have, a macro lens in the 50mm to 60mm range would be good enough because there is a 40% to 50% crop factor built in. A 60mm macro on a Nikon D80/D90 would be the equivalent of a 90mm lens. Sometimes when I shoot jewelry, I end up using my 105mm or 200mm macro lenses instead of the 60mm macro on my full frame sensor body to get further back.

If you're not interested in the latest bells and whistles, look for a recently discontinued model camera. I'm a Nikon person so I would recommend the D80 over the newer D90 to save money. Or the D200 over the D300. Do not look at the D40, D40X, or D60 because they are limited to using lenses with the motors built in for autofocus, though you should always use manual focus photographing jewelry so you can control the focus point to get maximum depth of field.

Larry Berman
Digital Jury Services
412-767-8644

Mega-pixles are important but its all in the lens. Great lenses cost. Any good camera shop should help . Take a sample of your work so they can talk intellegently. They make a soft box that is cube shaped, made of white cloth, ask about that.mjb