I bought a few ultra huge rings a few days ago and because they looked so pretty, I decided to try photographing them to see if I could take a good enough picture.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I’m not particularly good at still-life photography (as you could probably see in my first attempt at using off-camera flash a few months back). Now, these were especially difficult for me due to the reflective nature of the surface finish of the rings coupled with the jewels etc.

At first, I was using my 50mm f1.8 for the job. However, the built-in flash on my D90 triggering the SB-800 interfered with the final exposure mainly due to the fact that I was positioning the camera way too close to rings and getting huge reflections off them. The white balance wasn’t quite right either.

I therefore, switched off all the lights in the room (yes…I was shooting in complete darkness), swapped to the 18-105mm and zoomed out considerably. ISO set to 640, Aperture f5.6, Shutter Speed: 3″ (D90 mounted on tripod). The images now were turning out to be pretty good. I was reasonably happy with them when I reviewed them on the computer and and didn’t bother with any post-processing and this was my best shot :

I’m fairly pleased with them actually. But an expert might disagree. Anyway, iIf you’re interested in the set-up (taken with iPhone):