How to get a nicely black background?

Question

I'm trying to take photos of my jewelry with a deep black background, but am not getting the look I want. I am using black cotton for a backdrop and wondering if there is a better material that would work. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

use a black cloth with lights swicthed off and ur flash on

help me please!

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Answer 2

You need black velvet for that. It absorbs the light and doesn't reflect back. So you get true black.  

Answer 3

There are a few tricks to that:

- the fabric needs to be something non-shiny and matte

- you need some distance between your subject and the background

-careful lighting - try to get light onto the subject without lighting up the background

- try very slightly under-exposing the shot.

Then, after all that, your background probably still won't look totally black. That's where post processing comes in. Hopefully you have Photoshop (use the levels and/or curves tool). If not, you can download the gimp for free (www.gimp.org), or try www.fotoflexer.com.

Answer 4

Try  some black poster board.  

Answer 5

The whole problem is one of exposure. You do not state what camera you are using, how you are lighting, and how you are metering. If you are letting the camera automatically meter for the entire scene, it will read the black as too dark and will raise the exposure levels higher than they should be. You are going to need to set a  negative 2EV exposure value in your camera right from the start. This will help prevent the camera from rendering the black background as too light.

Ideally, you need to either use an ambient light meter placed at the jewelry and looking back toward the camera to determine a proper speed and aperture setting. Also, a grey card could be placed at the jewelry and you can use your camera to meter off the grey card, then put those settings manually into your camera.

But if you are just letting the camera automatically expose for the black background with no exposure compensation, you will never have a pure black background.

steve

Answer 6

Hi Punk

You need to use black velvet. This is the material used throughout. When you go in a jewelry store, all diamonds are mostly on a velvet background because light has no effect on it as fas as glare.

This is what we use in shoots before printing the product.