Calling all photography people!

[manderz]

I wasn't quite sure where to put this thread, so I apologize in advance if it's not in the right place!

After discovering that quite a few of my diamonds have fluorescence (and even a little phosphorescence), I wanted to try and take pictures to share. But, I'm pretty awful with my point and shoot camera. I have a tripod, and my uv light is a small, 9 led flashlight. My camera is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3. It's not fabulous, but it's not terrible either. I would really appreciate some pointers to make my pictures turn out a little better. Thanks in advance!!

 

[kenny]

I found it helped to also have a little other light besides the UV light.

 

[manderz]

Interesting, I never thought of using a little normal light as well. Thanks, Kenny. It makes sense, since my cell phone camera usually performs very poorly in darker conditions.

 

[davi_el_mejor]

I use full normal lighting and move the Black light closer to the diamond. This way the camera doesn't have to work on getting the exposure level, which ultimately makes your picture blurry.

If that doesn't work for you, absolutely dark room, camera on tripod and if you camera has a long exposure setting set that to to .5seconds or 1 or 2 seconds (trial and error for you camera). Also use the timer setting. This way you pressing the button won't shake the camera.

Here's a few examples of my methods

First Method: (different diamonds)





Second Method (it's a faint red fluor so I had to have a lot of time to capture it all)

 

[manderz]

Thanks for the additional tips, Davi. My camera takes good pictures during the day, so I'll try your first method. I haven't messed with the settings too much, so that would be a bit easier for me anyway. Never occurred to me to use the timer setting, thanks for the idea!