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Product photography - Jewelry

vchiline

New member
Hi there,

I run a photo studio that shoots small products - primarily jewelry and some watches. We shoot high volume at times for catalogs, web, etc.

I've been looking at upgrading my studio gear from 35mm Canon. I initially was thinking of getting into MF, with a Phase One P65+ along with the 645DF and 120 macro. Several people in the MF forum talked about view cameras. I've got a couple of questions with that regard.

Currently, we focus stack several shots together, anywhere from 8-14 on average. Here's a sample image that's been focus stacked on my jewelry photography blog. Using a View Camera, such as a Rollei X-Act2, or Sinar, etc, would it be possible to retain good resolution and get more DoF without stacking, or would stacking still be needed, but in less shots? I know I can get more DoF in any system by moving away from the subject, but I will loose overall resolution (as the item is smaller in the frame).

I'm from the 35mm world, so View Cameras are a completely new beast to me.

Thanks for any guidance and help!

Vadim
 
I'd recommend a linhof 679cs or similar, or as an alternative a good 4x5 monorail with a scanning back may be a good choice. You can't get more DoF, what you can do is adjust the plane of focus so that it falls along the subject. Normally the plane of focus is parallel to the sensor/film. By tilting and swinging the lens you can change the angle of the plane that is sharp.

By using rise, fall and shift, you can create (or avoid) different perspectives in the sense that you can bring the back parallel to the subject to avoid converging diagonals, whilst also controlling the relationship of near and far objects (for example if you lift the camera up, you look over the foreground objects more, however using rise and fall can bring your subject back into the frame without changing perspective.

Finally shift can move the camera out of reflections in some cases, whilst maintaining the same perspective (i.e. not looking around the foreground subjects).
 
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