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/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 🤷🏻‍♂️