Jewellery on a seamless white Infinity Cove is harder than it looks. The cove wants to reflect. The metal wants to blow out. The stones want to go flat.
Here's how we solved it on a recent shoot without leaving the studio to set up a traditional still-life table.
The brief. 18 SKUs of high-end gold and diamond pieces, white background, crisp reflections on the metal without losing stone detail.
The setup. Piece placed on a clear acrylic riser 80cm in front of the cove base. Two 120cm softboxes as broad top-key and fill at 45° — soft enough to wrap the stones, directional enough to separate metal edges.
The trick. A black flag just outside frame, below the piece, to give the bottom edge of the metal a dark reflection for definition. Without it the metal merges into the white.
Polarisers. Crossed polariser on the camera lens + polarising gel on the key light. Cut specular glare on the gold by 80%. Stones stayed bright.
The lesson. You don't need a custom product table for jewellery. The cove + a riser + a flag + polarised key gets you 90% of the way there, with the bonus of being able to shift to a model-on-cove campaign shot in the same setup without rebuilding.
Took 45 minutes to rig. The client got 18 SKUs in a 4-hour half-day.