I assisted a photographer who shot for a national chain (8 x 10 film).
He used diffuse light in the form of a big softbox- close and overhead with a larger diffusion panel in between and a few small spotlights in strategic places to add some spectral highlights.
Those small spots gave the jewelry life made it sparkle.
He shot double-spread full-page images with several jewelry pieces, so if you're doing only one at a time you may not need more than one or two spots.

What kind of lights do you have to work with?
There are softboxes made for speedlights and a lot of DIY that would suffice.

I think I read every day that shooting digital is FREE.
If it's so free, why do you have $10,000 wrapped up in it.
So many say, "film is so expensive, I'll never go back..., digital is FREE!!!!".
So how free IS digi...., let's take a look!!!

With film, I had probably a total of $750 tied up in a Canon T-90 and maybe 3 lenses!! I did my own black and white and sent in and paid for the color rolls.
I even had an old 4x5 with a total of probably $150 including holders and all.

So, to shoot digi, wow, it IS free..., almost.
Let's see....,
2 bodies, $3500
Previous digi cameras, $500
Computer and monitor, $1300
Extra batteries, $150
8 memory cards, maybe $250
A couple external drives(3), $250
Two printers, $1200
Past ink, $500
Software, PS and LR, $300
Courses, $1000
Good thing I'm a cheapskate!!!
That's only about $9000!!!
I'm gonna throw a lens in just to make it an even TEN GRAND!!!
I have not had to upgrade any lenses because of too many pixels, so I wont count lenses.
If you moved to say a D800 and had to get the trilogy as a result, you need to count those!!
$10,000 could buy a lot of film and developing!!! :lol: :lol:

So geeezzz, let's see just how free shooting digi is for you?!?!

Don't forget to count all the previous digital cameras, obsolete computers, monitors, laptops, printers, ink and lenses purchased as a result of digi and any courses you've paid to learn digi!!
Digi really IS FREE(almost)!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
SS

I'm really enjoying learning about panoramas and have been doing a lot of web searching and making a few to tests. Most of what I have been reading is that you don't want to change your focus, setting it manually and using a sufficient aperture to control the depth of field. That may be fine for many panoramas, but if you want to include subjects that do not fall within the range of focus of your particular lens and associated aperture, ie, close up objects, you run into a focus issue. Of coarse, you could go to a wider lens, but in many cases, that changes the whole perspective of the photograph. IE, you could go from a 50mm to a 24mm. Also, on a side note, considering you are trying to get the sharpest image you can, one would want to be shooting at an aperture that gives you that. My 50mm Sigma tested out to be sharpest at F/9, but if I want more DOF than F/9 provides, I need to go to a higher f/stop. Doing that however defeats the purpose to a degree, because smaller aperture is less sharp. So that drives one to want to change the focus as you make the panorama while maintaining the aperture sweet spot. I know there is software out there that deals with this issue, creating a dof that exceeds the capability of the lens, but that's an added step that if possible I would like to avoid. So my question: Can you change focus during the shooting of the panorama, just slightly as you rotate through the scene, or will that create a stitching problem. One video I watch about making a multi-row pano, the photographer made a slight focusing change as he began a new row, but said it was not good to change focus much. How "much" is "much"? I think this therefore is a question of degree. I can experiment in the field of coarse, and I will. But if any of you would like to throw in comments, it would be appreciated.