Tested out my new picture setup for the first time tonight.

Figured my first subject should be what is probably the nicest struck '67 nickel I own.





Feel free to critique me, I need it.

 

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You're a terrible dresser and you don't tip enough. The pictures look good however.

 

You forgot the flock-of-seagulls hair.

 

I like your pics. You may need a little bit more light though. I am also testing out a coin photography set up and hope to have some pics of my own posted soon. This is a process that takes a lot of patience. :smile TC

 

But seriously Merc. The picture detail is good. I do believe they need to be lighted a little more, or some adjustments made. There does seem to be some shadows being cast by the high points. I would love to see some more pictures of different coins though.

Also: 3000th post!

 

Pretty darn good! Just a couple things...

You need better light, you know you're there with light when you can "see" luster in the pic..... and I can barely see it in your pics. Light is a tricky beast and it's about 90% of a good coin shot.

Use a WHITE back ground and take your coin out of the holder. When I can see a white background I can guage the quality of the picture by the purity of the white. Calibrate your white balance for each change in lighting condition. When I see pictures on a non-white background the flags start going up, I'm thinking the photographer is trying to hide something because it makes it VERY hard to guage the color of the coin.

 

Impressive , Luke. Zowee pics!!

 

Hi Merc, very nice pics with your new Tamron Macro lens. Can I ask what exactly you are using for lighting? Are you diffusing the lights with anything? Just curious. The sharpness of the coin is superb, and I actually can see some luster so it's quite nice. Nice pics!! I look forward to hearing more details about your setup.

 

Three of these;

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20169658/

I wanted cheap, flexible lighting. This works well. Struggling with toning, though, even with diffused lighting. Gonna play around some more tonight and see if I can figure something out. Since I don't have a copy stand, I'm just using the camera's timer and laying it on the table. Propping the coins up on, get this... hockey pucks, haha. This one was in the dansco, so no hockey pucks in that shot.

EDIT: forgot, the above photos were taken using only two of those lights, at about 10 and 2 o'clock.

 

It also helps to start out with a lot of hair. There will be plenty of hair tugging........or you're not doing it right.

 

I'm 25 and fairly bald, the last thing I'm gonna do is start pulling it out, lol.

 

I'm 32 and completely bald, so give it a few years.

One other comment for you. Those Jansjos are really great lamps for small spaces. They are also what I use for my imaging needs. They do have a bit of a pinkish/orange temperature to them, so you may also want to try to do the custom white balance trick with a sheet of white paper. You simply take a picture of a sheet of white paper, and then your camera uses that image to reset the white balance for subsequent images. If I remember right, you have the Canon T2i, so the instructions would be here: http://vimeo.com/groups/550d/videos/9742411

All in all, your nickel shot is really superb. It's clear, shows some luster, and is decently lit. I think you have a spiffy lens there! :thumb: nice work!

 

Just for the fun of it, here is my most recently imaged Jefferson Nickel

 

Wow, that's a great pic, I still have some work to do, haha. Two or three lights for that one?

 

Three lights, with fancy diffuser thinga-ma-jig cone doo-hickeys for the end of my Jansjo lamps. I'm going to Private Message you a link that I think you'll find helpful!

 

Sweet, thanks! I was using electric tape and TP to diffuse the lighting ha.

 

Hey Merc, after doing a little post processing on it, it seems to me you just need to adjust the direction of your light. Am I correct by assuming you werent really hitting with light directly from above? Were you using two lights at an angle? The way it is casting a shadow both at the top and the bottom and on the cheek make me think that.

 

Two lights juuuuust behind the lens, pointing towards 10 and 2.

 

Was tinkering around with this setup tonight...



It worked fairly well, in lieu of an actual copy stand.

Undiffused 3 light shots...




Played around with the lighting, struggled a bit with where to put them, ended up settling for using all three lights. As the battery was dying off, I think I finally figured it out... top two lights diffused, bottom not, resulted in these images. Note this is a different coin than the earlier '55-S.

 

Looking good, Merc! :thumb: