Clear Cut Gems: Experiences?

[digdeep]

So can this 'experiment' be done under a different location or thread than this one? It's very hard to not see the prosecution side of this with so much content aimed at one vendor.

I hope taking photo's of this stone (and/or others) will make a difference in showing the many variables of color and photography. I applaud the vendor's that are willing to do so......but please make it a new thread--something like "where is a colored stone's true color?".....

 

[T L]

I know monitors vary but I have found that saturation level is very speculative as well. What is vivid to one person, is medium saturation to another. I think a better way of communicating color through vendor/consumer is to use a panatone on a website. I used to use the gemewizard tool when it was free (no longer however). That may help in communicating these vendor/consumer issues in regard to color, and color shifts. Monitors can vary, so this is by no means a perfect way of communicating color, but I think its better than using highly speculative references. JMO.

I remember one very popular lapidary who was trying to convince me to buy a gem, and he deemed it highly saturated, no grey. I asked him to show me the best gemewizard color that represented the stone. He did, and I found it to be a greyish saturation. He was probably honest about what he thought was vivid, but unfortunately, his vivid and my vivid did not match, as the color he chose was not what I would have considered vivid. I still consider him a very honest vendor.

 

[minousbijoux]

I remember one very popular lapidary who was trying to convince me to buy a gem, and he deemed it highly saturated, no grey. I asked him to show me the best gemewizard color that represented the stone. He did, and I found it to be a greyish saturation. He was probably honest about what he thought was vivid, but unfortunately, his vivid and my vivid did not match, as the color he chose was not what I would have considered vivid. I still consider him a very honest vendor.

I have had similar experiences with several vendors that I respect enormously, that their vivid and my vivid do not match up. Returns are a necessary part of the online buying experience.

 

[FrekeChild]

I've shown gems to groups of people and had situations where half of a group would see a gem as one color and the other half as another.

Interestingly my car is "Electron Blue Pearl", which is blue with violet. Some people see it as being blue, some people call it purple.

There is a wide variation in color perception. In addition, there is a big difference in light just from the latitude you live at: the kelvin temperature of sunlight in Florida where Llloyd is located is much different than sunlight in Canada, where you are located. That means that the same gem can look different in Florida vs. Canada. There is just no substitute for seeing a gem and deciding if the color works for you or not.

While I agree that a stone can vary between locations, and even within the same location due to lighting, but the degree that we are talking about here is not insignificant. Also, in regards to the first stone - I'm in Southern/Central California and my particular area sees ~200 clear days per year. I got the stone in May of last year, and the few days I looked at it, it was clear, sunny, and 90+ degrees outside. I imagine that Florida would have a similar amount of sunshine.

I just wanted to put this out there because I don't want people to say, "Oh, the color difference between his photos and her photos is attributable to climate and it being in snowy winter Canada vs sunny Florida." YES, that might be at play, but it's my feeling that the stone is genuinely not that bright or blue.

I'm happy to see that cutters are coming together and discussing photographing the same stones. I'm hoping that everyone will write up a description of the stone as well.

I don't know if anyone would care, or be interested, but I'd be willing to photograph stones and participate in the project, from a consumers perspective, using a cell phone camera and two P&S cameras. Just a thought.

 

[kissmegoodby]

I just wanted to put this out there because I don't want people to say, "Oh, the color difference between his photos and her photos is attributable to climate and it being in snowy winter Canada vs sunny Florida." YES, that might be at play, but it's my feeling that the stone is genuinely not that bright or blue.

Can't you please give it a rest,this is starting to sound like a stuck recording!

 

[Mico]

Hello, kissmegoodby, welcome to pricescope! As a rule of thumb we try not to attack each other and only share experiences/observations or educational information when posting, this applies to consumers and vendors. This must have been some thread to have you open an account and chime in.

I hope you stick around and continue posting after this thread dies down, and not help provoke it back to what it was before it took this turn towards an interesting endeavor with various cutters agreeing to help shed light on a known issue photographing gems and color perception.

Best,
Mico

 

[kissmegoodby]

This must have been some thread to have you open an account and chime in.

I hope you stick around and continue posting after this thread dies down, and not help provoke it back to what it was before it took this turn towards an interesting endeavor with various cutters agreeing to help shed light on a known issue photographing gems and color perception.

Yes I will definitely "stick around" as this thread is quite well known already.I must say even though this thread has recently taken a turn towards a more educational mode there still seems to be an undertone of accusation and assumption from some.Lets hope that stops.
It's quite interesting as to what passes for "attack" and what is accepted as entirely educational but I suspect that depends on who is posting.

Thanks for the welcome.

 

[Mico]

This must have been some thread to have you open an account and chime in.

I hope you stick around and continue posting after this thread dies down, and not help provoke it back to what it was before it took this turn towards an interesting endeavor with various cutters agreeing to help shed light on a known issue photographing gems and color perception.

Yes I will definitely "stick around" as this thread is quite well known already.

Thanks for the welcome.

Anytime

That's interesting, where else did you see it?

 

[digdeep]

Freke, I think it's totally inappropriate for you to be part of the photo entourage given the thread that you created and the fact that you have clear beliefs about the vendor's photography and stones---which is fine-- but those are your's, and not shared by everyone on PS. I think the "trade" identified people who are willing to take photo's represent a consumer's best interest by showing us what they discover as they contribute in this manner.

 

[FrekeChild]

Sorry Freke, I think it's totally inappropriate for you to be part of the photo entourage given the thread that you created and the fact that you have clear beliefs about the vendor's photography and stones---which is fine, but those are your's and not shared by everyone. So, no thank you. I think the "trade" identified people who are willing to take photo's represent a consumer's best interest by showing us what they discover as they contribute in this manner.

You are welcome to your opinion. I really don't know what I did to get under your skin, but you seem to really have it in for me.

Also, I have said plainly that the stone previously mentioned in this thread was nice and well cut, it was just not as pictured. Blingergrrl has said the same, and even kissmegoodby said, "he has taken pic's for me and the colors have been off,but I have a lot of his stones".

I believe this has grown bigger than Lloyd's stones, and I'm very excited to see the results. I'm so happy that something good may come from this thread!

 

[digdeep]

Freke, don't make this personal because it's not. (nice try, though) I would have said the same thing to anyone who had posted a thread such as you have and then came back into the situation such as this. It's meant to be 'helpful' and I give the rationale for what I'm saying as well. Take it or leave it, I have no illusions about my 'power'..............

 

[Alnitak]

While I agree that a stone can vary between locations, and even within the same location due to lighting, but the degree that we are talking about here is not insignificant. Also, in regards to the first stone - I'm in Southern/Central California and my particular area sees ~200 clear days per year. I got the stone in May of last year, and the few days I looked at it, it was clear, sunny, and 90+ degrees outside. I imagine that Florida would have a similar amount of sunshine.

I just wanted to put this out there because I don't want people to say, "Oh, the color difference between his photos and her photos is attributable to climate and it being in snowy winter Canada vs sunny Florida." YES, that might be at play, but it's my feeling that the stone is genuinely not that bright or blue.

I'm happy to see that cutters are coming together and discussing photographing the same stones. I'm hoping that everyone will write up a description of the stone as well.

I don't know if anyone would care, or be interested, but I'd be willing to photograph stones and participate in the project, from a consumers perspective, using a cell phone camera and two P&S cameras. Just a thought.

I didn't say that all of the difference was attributable to latitude, but let me educate you here because you don't understand what role it plays. Latitude affects the color temperature not because of the amount of sunlight--your 200 days of sunlight is irrelevant. It has to do with the relative angle of the sun and the amount of atmosphere it traverses, which attenuates the blue light.

Lloyd's website says he's in the Florida Keys. That puts him in the subtropics, right around 24 degrees N. I don't know where you're located, but based on what you said, you're at about 35 degrees N (Los Angeles is 34, San Fran 37). Montreal is 44 degrees N. That means you're half the distance to Canada relative to Lloyd. That's NOT a minor amount when looking at a color-shift gem that's sensitive to blue light--which is what these Winza sapphires are. On top of that...let's repeat this...Lloyd was VERY clear all along that the stones did not look as blue as the photos made them appear.

At the end of the day even having a bunch of us photograph some stones will do little except visibly demonstrate that its very hard to represent color consistently. I'm not even going to say "accurate" or "true" because those are relative terms. There is too much difference in color perception to claim any one representation is "true." All of this comes back to what a good vendor will have: An inspection and return policy. When a vendor offers this, its hard to see why there's a need to ascribe any negative motivations or negative opinion about such a vendor as the policy would defeat the purpose of being deceptive with photos or descriptions.

The continued tone of your replies and that of one or two others has been to imply that somehow Lloyd was trying to deceive. Not only is that unnecessary, its also completely unsupported by the email communications that have been shared between Lloyd and others here. You called Lloyd my friend earlier when I was defending him. I'd be glad to call him my friend, but I've never even met him. No, I'm speaking up because I don't like seeing someone being treated or disparaged unfairly. I'm speaking up to dispel ignorance and to help educate people about things like color perception and color display challenges with cameras, monitors, etc. As someone in the trade this matters to me as well, because I'd hate to receive the same treatment I've seen given to Lloyd here. I strive very hard to get my photos to be as accurate as possible, but also beautiful enough to show the stone to its best and attract potential customers. That's a very hard thing to do, and I don't think its well appreciated how much work many of us in the trade put into it. It matters to us a great deal as this is our livelihood.

Jeff

 

[FrekeChild]

Hi Jeff,

My hope regarding Lloyd is that he takes steps to more accurately portray the stones he's selling in a photograph. That's it. I don't hold any hard feelings towards him, and I don't hold him in poor regard. I don't hold his photos or his cutting work in poor regard - they are very nice.

My one problem is how inaccurate the photos are. That's it! So I hope he can figure out a way to correct them to be more accurate to the stone in hand. Even through the dreaded photoshop. I'm not trying to say that he's intending to deceive people with his pictures. I don't have a motive for why he would post pictures and then have to go into depth with explaining the color to people, it seems like it'd be less time consuming to have more accurate pictures.

My last post detailing my area was not actually trying to further the conversation about the stone that I saw, but in defense of blingergrrrl's location being in Canada, since you pointed it out. I would really hate to start seeing threads started with "Should I only buy gemstones from cutters/vendors within close proximity to me?" and "I don't know if I should buy the stone, what if it doesn't look the same because I'm in Washington state and the seller is in Virginia/Beijing/Arizona/etc?" When new gemstone buyers are considering buying a stone, even the slightest thing can steer them away from a stone that may be exactly what they are looking for, but they've never done it before and are anxious about the process. ESPECIALLY with someone who has never bought a gemstone online; eBay has given online sellers a bad rap, I think. Sometimes it really doesn't matter what kind of return policy is in place.

I think that air quality, lighting situations/atmosphere/shadowing/season/etc etc etc CAN absolutely have an effect on how a stone looks, but having looked at most of my rings in Hawaii, New York, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada and several parts of California within the past year, I feel as though I can comfortably say that my stones (green garnet, blue spinel, blue sapphire, pink spinel, gray spinel, lavender spinel, blue-green tourmaline, white spinel and diamond) have not looked all that different in these very different places/latitudes/longitudes/altitudes/seasons/light sources/humidity/air quality/etc. And I've actually been looking for differences because I thought it was an interesting concept. But I haven't seen anything truly noteworthy.

Of course, I know that this is anecdotal and I don't have a huge variety of gemstone species, so it proves nothing, but because some of my friends and I had talked about location changing the look of a stone, I have kept an eye out for it. I don't have that kind of extensive travel planned for the near future, but I think it'll be interesting for me to document it going forward.

I really hope that the photography project gets going. Kenny has started a thread in Hangout about it:
https://www.pricescope.com/communit...scopes-photography-comparison-project.199604/

ETA: the following two pictures were both taken with an iPhone 4s.

 

[Alnitak]

ETA: the following two pictures were both taken with an iPhone 4s.

Awesome collection of rings!

Jeff

 

[FrekeChild]

ETA: the following two pictures were both taken with an iPhone 4s.

Awesome collection of rings!

Jeff

Thank you. I'm afraid many of these have been sold/unset/reset. My collection has morphed quite a bit in the last year. Only 7 of the 14 in the Cali picture remain intact. Such is the life when you have a colored stone addiction.

 

[ruffysdad]

As a cutter myself, I know there's a lot of problems in getting an accurate representation. I want to present my rough and cut stones in the most pleasing way to stimulate sales. That's the business I'm in But I freely admit that I don't have the time, equipment, knowledge or budget to become another Jeff Hunt. So I muddle along as best I can with what I've got. I'm also not very conversant with photoshop or in my case, Gimp (Gimp's free, I can afford that). I notice that the backgrounds on Lloyds pictures are very subdued and that may be having an effect on the picture. I know I used to have a heckuva time trying different backgrounds in order to get the stone to "Pop" a little more, before I said the heck with all of this and just went to a white background even if it makes the stone look a little blah.

My opinion on this issue is that Lloyd's an awesome cutter and if the pictures vary from reality, it's probably because he has the same problems I have. I've seen a lot of his shots that were right on the money, although this one looks off the mark. The most important things in buying over the web is the integrity and return policy of the seller and IMHO Lloyd's cutting skill is only matched by his honesty.

Pete