You put the gemstone on a small, 6", rotating platform, usually battery powered. The platform will have a mirrored surface. Use soft lighting. A 90mm lens will keep you far enough away from the stone to give a reasonable working distance. You may want to use a light box. Have fun and show us how it turned out.

Dale

Not likely.

This system is in mint condition, all works as it should. Lenses are 45, 80, 110, 150, 210, 75-150.

Entire system $600

Its yours. I'll be out of the house all morning. I'll get back to you ASAP.

Dale

All with original boxes. All are in pristine condition and look brand new. I have used them so little its ridiculous. So I'm going to a point and shoot.

A7RII $1000
FE 3.5-6.3 24-240 OSS $700
FE 2.8/90 MACRO G OSS $800 a killer lens

All three as a package deal $2000

Thanks ID, I thought Goo Gone might attack the rubber. I'll give it a test.

I have goo residue from grippers tape on the rubber manual focus ring on my Sony 24 -240 OSS lens. For fear of messing up the rubber I havn't tried any removal solutions yet. I doubt soap and water will do. Recommendations if you will.

When that's accomplished it will be for sale along with my A7RII and my FE 2.8 90 Macro G OSS. Some one will get the deal of a lifetime for all three. But if I get 3 buyers I will part out. All are in like new pristine condition.

Dale

Nicely done

Multiply the photo horizontal resolution x the vertical resolution, then divide by 1,000,000. You will then have the photo MP resolution. So you must know the photo res. This has nothing to do with the camera res that took the photo, it could have been film and not ones and zeros.

Good info, good info indeed. Looks like I'm narrowing down my techniques to experiment with.

Dale

I was thinking of the same mix. Google Tino Hammid and you will see why I am looking into this.

Dale

OK everyone, I should have done this a long time ago. Here is a site that is a total class act. Steve is a hell of a nice guy, buy from him and tell him I sent you.

Note that the stones display killer color and yet have no, or minimal, bright reflections. This is what I want to accomplish. But they could be a little better. It would be super if you had focus all the way down into the stone. A wee more depth of field. He should have stopped down more. I will!!

www.stevorocks.com

Dale

E.L. I'm only to happy to send you a few stones to work with. They don't have to be $10,000 rubies only good examples. I also need to show you guys an example of what I consider to be class act gemstone photography.

Dale

It doesn't work properly to light a gemstone from below because the gemstone pavilion is the light "engine" of the stone (not understood by many). The gemstone pavilion collects and redirects collected light back to the viewer/camera through the crown facets if/when pavilion facets are designed for the the particular gemstone Refractive Index and properly designed and executed. Stones are by design commanded to collect light from above. It's what modern gemstone design is all about. In simpler terms it's like driving the wrong way down a one way street. It wasn't designed to take place and bad things can happen. So backlit gemstones just don't look right. Marbles are round and could care less which direction they are illuminated, round is round. An incident light ray entering a round surface behaves similarly at all points tangent to it's round surface. So photographically we're talking apples and oranges, gorillas and pussy cats, marshmellows and cement blocks. To allow a stone to return light AND color back to the viewer/camera it's engine has to be allowed, and designed, to work properly.

Sorry for the expounding but you have to understand some of the basics of stone performance in order to illuminate, if it were. As I've said, it took me over 20 years to learn and understand these nuances. I learned how to make the little sweeties as bright as possible and now I have to undo all that to photograph them properly. I need to present to the viewer as much color as possible while destroying all the brilliance that the well designed stone is throwing back to me. I'm learning that proper filtering may be my answer.

Nice shots of the coins. Gemstones have different challenges. And I now realize that I have to understand how to control and manipulate lighting to obtain my desired needs.

Dale