What a clever thread; great idea Belinda and Lisa C. I desperately need to hone up on my skills.
Well, I am no expert but if you find my photographs (see my albums) and posts decent enough, I'm happy to share.
I have eschewed my husband's fancy Nikon SLR as it is (a) heavy and cumbersome, and, (b) I need a light portable camera as I take all my pics with one hand, the other hand being my display board for the pearls.
Like Mophius, I, your baseline amateur (6 months into shooting pearls, the very moment I made the bold step and joined PG in fact) find my cheap and trusty point-and-shoot good enough for my needs. My photojournalist turned pilot brother - Can I crow, can I... I'm very proud of him, he's a captain with Singapore Airlines and flies a 380, has had a couple of hard knocks and is now looking for a wife, any takers? Sorry for digressing

- declared the Canon Ixus 870IS as sufficient for my needs as that's what the journo folk use (info is backdated to about three years ago, I hasten to add) apparently in lieu of their fancy equipment when forced to.
I read earlier from a post that Jeremy did about how in China the factories have windows facing the north as northern light is best for pearl sorting and grading so that's what I did. I found the northern aspect in my house, the garden that is, and photograph my designs in both direct (brings out the sparkle in the gems) and indirect light (best for the lustre and overtones of the pearls).
I learnt from Pattye and Caitlin to press the flower icon till "macro" appears; my brother sneered (not cool, bro, not cool at all) as he taught me how to disable the auto-flash function (on my Canon, it is the thunderbolt icon) as the flash always seems to overexpose the pics. Flowers and thunderbolts, how juvenile am I sounding!
I will tell it to you straight that I gave up at the very first reading of complicated technical set-ups a long time ago; too intimidating for a novice like me with the lightboxes, backlighting and angled lamps and the like.
Am afraid that is all this amateur knows. Pros like Belinda had better ignore my naive post
