You can achieve professional looking photos with very little investment other than a good digital camera. I used to use a Sony Mavica MVC-FD88, which stores the data on a floppy disk.

The light box was an old Tupperware, 12" wide x 7.5" high x 5" deep.  I used a regular desk lamp that swung over it. I straddled the beads between two pieces of Fimo clay on a mandrel. When I had a vertical bead, I stuck the mandrel vertically into the clay, stuck the wire up thru the paper, and shot. To edit photos I used PhotoDeluxe because it was easy and had an "instant fix" button that corrected the color.
The setup as pictured above produced this photo:

                            




My current setup is a photo light box I got on eBay. My lights are halogens I got at the hardware store. My current camera is a Nikon D50 with a Nikkor 60mm Macro lens. I edit with Photoshop Elements 4.0.
Here is a photo taken with the Nikon and my current light set up in the light box:





I sometimes shoot outdoors in the afternoon sun. Make sure to always check your "white balance", set it to Daylight, and when shooting outdoors, set your ISO to about 800. Hope this helps.

mj