Budget Watch Collecting/Watch Photography

With many cameras, it can be difficult to get a good clear picture of a watch. Many cameras will not focus close enough. If that problem is solved, then the flash is likely to be too bright, and if you turn the flash off indoors, colors are likely to be incorrect.

Budget macro

A jeweler's loupe or similar magnifying lens held in front of the camera lens will allow the camera to focus closer. On my camera a 2x or 3x works best for a whole watch, while a 10x is useful to highlight a watch part or a small area. I temporarily attach the loupe with Velcro, so I can change loupes or take standard pictures.

Flash

The easiest way to get good pictures is outdoors with natural light. If that is not practical, you may be able to diffuse the flash enough to allow closeup pictures with flash. I use several layers of crumpled watch tissue (Watch tissue is similar to gift wrap tissue, except pre-cut in 3" squares) over the flash--Sometimes I tape them directly over the flash, other times I will sandwich the tissue between 2 small plastic condiment cups.

Other lighting

Diffused lighting will typically mask scratches and similar flaws, while leaving markings clear. Many photographers use a light tent--Some sort of translucent material covering the watch, with a small opening for the camera. Lights will be outside the tent. This will produce extremely diffused light. To control reflections, you may want a ring of dark material around the watch, just outside the camera's field of view

Be careful of the colors around the watch--I've had problems with silvertone watches looking gold when I take pictures at my watch bench. I blamed it on my fluorescent lights, so replaced one with an incandescent. That helped a very little. I discovered that the main problem was the cork base and backdrop I had been using. Switching to green craft foam (what I had handy other than yellow) helped a lot.

Sometimes you want to enhance flaws--In these cases, you will want direct light--Experiment with different angles to get the result you want. I will use this for auction pictures, rather than describing the flaw's severity-I will find an angle that shows the flaw on the camera at approximately realistic levels and say "Watch has a blister on the dial, see pics" or something similar.

Resolution

For web pictures, 640x480 (or 480x640) is a good minimum for most purposes with careful framing, though going into the 1000-2000 pixel region in x or y does not generally hurt as of the 2020s, especially if you use a platform that automatically creates lower resolution thumbnails to save bandwidth on previews. Generally speaking, you should use a higher resolution to a point if it enhances the readability of the image. If you want to show a particular detail, take a second close-up of just that detail.

If you are taking photos for use as stills in video, consider a minimum resolution of 1280x720 (720p), preferably 1920x1080 (1080p) or 3840x2160 (4K), and topping out at 7680x4320 (8K).

If you are taking Photographs for print, you'll probably want to use the maximum native resolution offered by your camera. Resolution doesn't cleanly translate into DPI since size isn't inherent in digital files, but you'll want to hit 300PDI with your prints.

A photograph at 640x480 pixels, shown in native resolution. The photograph can be enlarged beyond this, but no authentic new details will be visible, and it may become pixelated. In print, the maximum x-axis size of that could be used while maintaining high quality is 54 millimeters (2.1 in), at roughly 300 or so dpi

Misc

If you take a batch of pictures by holding the camera sideways, and the camera doesn't auto-rotate, Windows XP and later can batch-rotate in Windows Explorer when in thumbnail mode. Hold the ctrl button while clicking on each picture that needs to be rotated in the same way (you can also draw boxes to select multiple pictures) then right-click and select one of the rotate options.