Problem: I have always had a very hard time focusing on small objects such as diamonds.

This is useful to Canon camera users shooting macro photography.

Macro Photography Blog

Making a standard DSLR camera behave more like a mirrorless, by enabling live view.

Step-by-step guide

When shooting Macro Photography (for example, still or 360 Jewelry Photography), focal point is very sensitive.

Main steps are:

  1. Shoot your images in Manual Focus mode
  2. No matter how well we did with focus in MF mode, the result would typically turn out a little blurry. We've figured it out!
  3. Enable Live View on the camera, to see the live view on the camera's LCD.  This will disable the Live View switching context right before the capture, which minimizes camera shake.  Watch this video for more details.

    On a Canon, the live view can be enabled by physically enabling the Live View using the Live View button on the camera, as shown above.

  4. Make sure Image Stabilization is set to Off, from the camera lens and camera settings menu.

(IMPORTANT – We think this issue is only local to Canon DSLRs and is due to the mechanics of the camera – more specifically Live View mode and Snap – and how we have to turn off live view before we can capture through the SDK.)

Alternative option was to shoot at Shutter Speeds faster than or equal to 1/160 (but that’s a bit hard considering the amount of light you need).
Please see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhYsQgpfXzY&feature=youtu.be which will explain it all. Attached are two sample images for reference – click on them to see full resolution.

Blurry Image When Camera LCD Live View is OFFClear Image When Camera LCD Live View is ON

Last, a 360 view can be viewed here: https://www.iconasys.com/Downloads/360-Diamonds-Photography/index.html (at 1500x1500 px)


Regarding that black reflections inside the diamond, arrows, which you would want to obtain, that can be achieved only when shooting the diamond dead on and you need to shoot at the correct angle. That's all it comes down to. Please see this image:
https://www.whiteflash.com/articlefiles/Benefits-of-Hearts-and-Arrows-Diamonds/Hearts-and-Arrows-Round-Ideal-Diamond-Diamond.jpg

You can see the arrows in the middle. You want to show these and in order to do so, you need to adjust camera to EXACTLY the right shooting angle. So that communicates how well the diamond was cut.

If it’s a bad cut, it won’t show that.

You would want to shoot at 41 degrees angle, to see the "arrows" inside the diamond. Here's the angle shooting scheme: