Good morning fellow collectors, I have gone up and down round and round with coin photography. I have bought books, a high end camera, a macro lens, tripod, light bulbs ect. And for me the hassle was getting to be a little too much. Setup was way too big and lighting confusing and It felt like I was shooting for the moon in a studebaker. This is due to partially by the fact that I was missing the basic knowledge in photography and because I am lazy. As most of my pictures are for ebay and I needed to find a simpler way to save some time. And this is what I came up with and have used since. This is not perfect but it does the job for me and its easy and far less costly and saves time. Camera The camera I use today is my girlfriend canon 600D instead of my canon 500D. It´s light and simple to use and with the important macro setting. From what I can see it costs about 99 USD on ebay. But I am sure you can find it for less. Lighting The best lighting for coins is natural daylight and what serious photagrephers try to do with their light setup is emulate that but adding a better control of angle. So what I have found is that if I take my coins to the window sill at noon and use a white paper from the printer as background. I can get a good resault and the light will show both the good and bad on the coin " a honest photo ". If the sun is to strong you can use a defuse paper. Cooking paper will do the trick. Tilting the camera a bit can also help with reflection of high luster. Software A lot of people get nervous when it comes to software. I use photoshop and have for many years but it´s exspensive. You can find very good freeware such as gimp that will do most of same things for free like cropping, rezise ect. The resault with out any editing With editing Something I did for ebay Any questions just ask Siggi
Nice presentation Siggi and excellent encouragement to those struggling with coin photography and basic equipment. The warm red color seen on the coin from the 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock position seems to be the reflection of your skin tone (perhaps your hand on the camera), clothing or something other reflected from the area around you when making the photo. To eliminate this a black or white paper may be selected and placed between the source of the color and the coin, to bounce or absorb the light thus eliminating the unwanted color reflecting off the coin. White/black paper will reflect its color (instead of you), which is more even and suitable to the light hitting the coin.
Thank you That would be my finger Nice catch. The one thing I have been strugling with is the reflection from the lens. Great advice to elimeating that I will use it next time
Although there may be, as I said, other things in the area around your set up that reflect on the surface of the coin, so you would still need to set up things to block the unwanted reflection, especially if they are of a particularly distracting color.
Reflective surfaces are the most difficult. Even with my cheapie set-up, I cut a hole through a sheet of paper and take my pics through that. The best way would be to set up a tent and shoot through a hole at the top. It takes up a lot of space but it's the set up I used to use to shoot jewelry. Sometimes the interior was white, sometimes black depending on the effect I wanted.
I do the same! It's also easy to get a box and line it with all black paper or cut out out the panels of the box and replace with thin tissue paper and project paper through the walls of the box, and on end of the box you have a hole for the camera lens to poke through. Works well in place of buying such photo equipment.
Sounds a little bit Greek to me, but I am going to give this a whirl, as I have found a few surprises in a box that I would like to share (hint: all are paper). I will trust the hopefully easy directions given here. Thank you for this post. Lucy
I've found that it's lighting......lighting.....lighting that counts in photography. If you can get the lighting correct then everything else falls into place. Nice shots there Siggy.....
I think all I need is a timing on my SONY HANDY CAM VIDs and CAMERA. I don't have much experiences taking a good quality picture but by Luck I think this is one of t he Best Shot I have without any modification just a simple click and this is a outcome. I just click and click and more click with auto focus.
Oh, forgot to add. If you're shooting for the moon in a "Studebaker"? You gonna make the big bucks 'cause Studebaker's are rare as hens teeth......
