Product Photography vs. Jewelry Photography: What’s the Difference?

Admin
Dec 3, 2025
3 min read

If you are launching an e-commerce brand, you might think all photography is the same. You hire a "product photographer," send them your items, and get photos back. Simple, right?

Not quite.

While all jewelry photography is technically product photography, not all product photography is jewelry photography. In fact, treating a diamond ring like a bottle of shampoo or a pair of sneakers is a recipe for disaster. Jewelry requires a completely different set of skills, equipment, and post-production techniques. It is a specialized niche within the industry.

In this guide, we will break down the critical differences so you can make the right hiring decision for your brand.

1. The Subject Matter: Size Matters

The most obvious difference is scale.

General Product Photography: Often deals with items like shoes, electronics, or cosmetics. These are large enough to be lit with standard softboxes and shot with standard lenses (like a 50mm or 85mm).
Jewelry Photography: Deals with objects often smaller than a coin. To photograph a pair of stud earrings, you are working in the realm of macro photography. A standard lens simply cannot focus close enough. You need a specialized 1:1 Macro Lens to fill the frame with the subject.
- The Consequence: Any vibration, even a heartbeat, can blur the image at this magnification. The tripod and gear requirements are much stricter.

2. Lighting: Managing Reflections

This is the biggest technical hurdle.

General Products: Most products have matte or semi-gloss surfaces (plastic, leather, paper). They are relatively easy to light because they absorb or diffuse light naturally.
Jewelry: Metal and gemstones are highly reflective.
- The "Mirror" Effect: A gold ring reflects everything around it—the camera, the photographer, the ceiling. If you use a standard lighting setup, the metal will look black or messy.
- The Solution: Jewelry photographers use a technique called "tenting" or specialized cones to surround the piece in pure white, ensuring the metal reflects only smooth light. Simultaneously, they must direct hard light into gemstones to create sparkle (fire). Balancing these two opposing lighting needs (soft for metal, hard for stone) is an art form.

3. Depth of Field and Focus

General Products: If you shoot a sneaker at f/8, the whole shoe is usually in focus.
Jewelry: At macro distances, the "depth of field" (the slice of the image that is sharp) becomes razor-thin—sometimes less than a millimetre!
- If you focus on the front prong of a ring, the back of the band will be a blur.
- The Specialist's Trick: To solve this, professional jewelry photographers use Focus Stacking. We take 10, 20, or even 50 photos at different focal points and merge them in software to get tack-sharp focus from front to back. A generalist product photographer rarely does this.

4. Retouching: The Hidden Hours

The workload difference in post-production is massive.

General Products: A good product shot might need 10-20 minutes of editing (color correction, background removal).
Jewelry: A high-end jewelry photo can take 1 to 3 hours to retouch.
- Why? Because at 100% zoom, every microscopic dust particle, casting flaw, or tiny scratch on the gold is visible.
- We often have to "redraw" parts of the metal digitally to make it look smooth and perfect. This requires a retoucher who understands the geometry of gemstones and the physics of metal.

5. The Cost Factor

Because of the specialized equipment (macro lenses, focus rails) and the intense labor (focus stacking, hours of retouching), jewelry photography typically commands a higher rate than general product photography.

The Reality: You are paying for the specialist's expertise to overcome the unique physics of shooting shiny, tiny objects. Cheap options usually result in dark, blurry, or "black metal" photos that damage your brand's reputation.

Conclusion: Choose the Specialist

If you are selling t-shirts, a general fashion or product photographer is perfect. But if you are selling jewelry, you need a specialist. The technical demands of lighting gold and diamonds are simply too unique.

At Peyman Khorram Studio, we don't just "take photos" of jewelry; we engineer them. We understand how to make gold glow and diamonds sparkle, ensuring your customers fall in love at first sight.