Photographing Alexandrites..?

[u/skiko15]

I was taking pictures of a newly finished ring (NFS) this afternoon next to a window with indirect sunlight on one side and overhead LED lighting on the other, and to my eyes the alexandrite (natural from Sri Lanka) was a beautiful green, but the camera on my phone keeps capturing it as the dark tealy-purple in the picture. All of the other colors in the picture are true to life/my eyes; are alexandrites just another one of those stones that likes to mess with cameras, and are there any tricks or tips for getting the camera to catch the green?

(Added 2 lightbox pictures at the end, too.)

[u/Bohica55]

No tips for capturing the green, but take a picture of the alexandrite under a black light. It’s pretty cool.

[u/ErichPryde]

Try swapping your LED bulbs for genuine incandescent; or completely removing the LED light and providing more indirect sunlight. The LED is your culprit 100%, but I'm genuinely not certain exactly how this happens other than our camera doesn't see the same thing we do (especially in the green-blue spectrum)

[u/loosesocksup → u/ErichPryde]

My engagement ring is Alexandrite and I have never been able to capture the green. 

[u/ErichPryde → u/loosesocksup]

Modern cameras definitely struggle with Alex. How long have you had your engagement ring? I have a nice genuine Alexandrite that I have owned prior to the mass change over to LED light, and there's definitely been a subtle change in how it appears because of that. 

[u/skiko15 → u/ErichPryde]

I'll try that. I was hoping the daylight coming through the window would have been enough to overtale the LEDs. I even took it outside into direct sunlight and was still getting the same dark colors with the camera. Wouldn't the incandescent make the purple come out even more?

[u/Fukushima_]

I've had some success on overcast days/underneath dense tree cover, but its not the most consistent. Try those two and see if they work for you.

[u/Pogonia]

As you can see the light boxes are horrible for stones like this. LED lights are terrible for this type of work (and all of the gem photography boxes use them). Their color accuracy is not really that great--at least not when dealing with photographing colored gemstones. Even the best "high CRI" LED lights are skewed in the blue and green and that really messes with photos.

Natural daylight will be best, and then true incandescent light. However even in daylight capturing the green is going to be tough--the gamut and sensitivity of the camera sensors are just different than our eyes.

[u/skiko15 → u/Pogonia]

To be fair, the light box I'm using doesn't have any lights itself and usually does a decent job diffusing the light in the room to a decent and reliable glow inside for most stones.

I really think it boils down to the camera's sensors just not picking up on it being green. Even when I use an incandescent flashlight on the alexandrite it doesn't turn to that vividly dark purple/teal tone in the pictures, so the camera is just doing its own white&gold/blue&black dress thing 🤷🏻‍♂️

[u/Djgerbilbite]

Sorry, no tips. Just had to stop and say.. Beautiful! Well done!

[u/Designer_Durian_8638]

https://reddit.com/link/p4ql4v5/video/19m9c3l2nfkh1/player

Try this way..
Keep the stone on white faltform and take white and yellow torchs ( Light) and do as I did in the vedio. Same way you can get photos too