Photograhing your finds

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The trick to blacking out the background is making sure that the light shining on the coin is much brighter than the light shining on the paper (whether that light on the paper is coming from the lamp, the room lights, a window, or whatever). You can tell that the lamp is throwing a fair amount of light at the paper because you can see the shadow of the coin stand. Try keeping room lights off, using something solid to block light from the lamp hitting the paper, and using a brighter lamp. I'm using a 60 or 100 watt bulb (can't tell, the writing is rubbed off) about 2-3 inches from the coin.

The lack of sharpness in the photo looks like it is caused by high ISO sensitivity (how sensitive your camera will be to light). If you can keep your ISO set at ISO100, that would make for the sharpest picture - higher ISO numbers make more noise in the photo, seriously reducing sharpness, especially on a point-and-shoot camera. The problem with ISO100 is that the camera won't be sensitive enough to keep your shutter speed fast enough to hand-hold the camera without camera shake blur. To solve that issue, a tripod would be best, even an inexpensive one. I have my camera on a tripod, facing straight down. I have the camera set up on a 10-second timer so that when I press the shutter button the camera has 10 seconds to settle down before it takes the picture.

 

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here is a generic template,if anybody once it.

 

I don't have a set up yet. just a light.and all I have is long lenses right now.but i'm not a dealer so I really don't take that many photos of coins.

 

my camera was in macro mode and if i separate the camera from the coin too much it blurs ... my white balance was on the one you has suggested earlier i also tried to separate the coin from the background.... i don't have a completely dark background tho... and all that being said i am still having a few problems .... also what should i settings should my other things be on like exposure , ISO , light metering and another one called "my colors"?


edit: i also changed the angle of light to what you had suggested.

 

Settings will be dependent on your specific lighting. For my setup, I'm at ISO100, F/11 aperture, and between 1/10 and .3 seconds shutter speed. The most important thing is to make sure you are getting plenty of even light on the coin and as little light as possible on the background. Lots of distance (12 inches or more) between the coin and background will greatly assist with that.

 

Today's sample:



The settings for this shot are:

1/6 second, F/11, ISO100. My camera allows me to set a custom white balance - basically I can take a picture of an object that is known to be a neutral white or gray and then tell the camera to use that color as "neutral" for all subsequent pictures. That being said, the sample image taken from my phone's camera included in one of my prior posts, simply used the "incandescent" white balance mode.

As before, I have a light positioned to the left of the coin shining straight sideways. I believe the bulb is 100 watts, but I can't read the number anymore so there is a possibility that it is 60 watts. The bottom edge of the bulb is lined up at coin level. The bulb is approximately 1.5 inches away from the left edge of the coin. The coin is elevated 10 inches above my black background. The black background is simply a piece of black construction paper from my daughter's art supplies (don't tell her I took a sheet!). The ambient lighting in my office is relatively subdued and shouldn't be contributing significantly to the exposure.

One problem people may experience is working distance - if your camera's macro mode requires you to get extremely close to your coin in order to focus you will probably see your own (and your camera's) reflection in the coin. The reflection may be a mirror-like reflection, a color cast on the coin, or simply a shadow from you/your hand/your camera blocking light from the lamp to the coin. Try using the zoom function in macro mode, this may help increase working distance.

 

That's a decent set up, and not too hard. My wife has a decent, kinda pricey camera (I wasn't fond of the fairly expensive purchase, but she loves it). I think I'll try to get something set up similar and use her camera. If I get around to it, I'll post a pic or two.

 

not sure that i'm completely happy with my pictures yet but i guess its a start?



and oh man there was a dog hair on my coin GRRR can't get it right!!!

maybe i will try silver next

 

I had really good luck scanning coins with my scanner. Quality is good, and I get good details with high dpi settings.

 

Good luck showing luster with a scan...

My setup uses 2/3 lights, diffused, on a Canon T2i body with a Tamron 272E Macro Lens. Once I get a copy stand, remote trigger, and pirate some software to take pictures with my laptop directly, it should be a sweet setup.

 

Nice, that's getting there! You should be able to get what you want from that point just by adjusting the position of your light!

 

An SLR with dedicated macro lens is definately the way to go if you can swing it. Quality can be much higher than with a point and shoot in macro mode.

I believe that Canon cameras come with software that allows tethered shooting and automatically places the picture in a folder on the computer. With the addition of something like Adobe Lightroom which will watch that folder and automatically import the files for editing, you'd have a nice fixed setup. You wouldn't even need a Canon remote trigger - the computer would be the trigger.

 

Sample with a coin with some lustre:



I adjusted the light to a higher angle for this one:

 

i tried silver i think i've got the hang of it .... i really could use something like a copystand though

 

any tips for using off camera flash rather than continuous lighting? i've got a good tripod with reversible column, canon 50d, sigma 17-50 f/2.8 OS, sigma 70-200 f/2.8 OS, 2x non reporting teleconverter with great iq, canon 430ex speedlight, multiple manual speedlights, wireless triggers, stands, umbrellas, i've also got multiple light boxes. for editing i've got photoshop cs4 and lightroom 3. sadly about 6 months ago i sold my canon 60mm macro and mr-14ex macro ringlight.

 

I'd look for small speedlight compatible softboxes to soften up the light a bit. I think the light from a speedlight bare would be pretty harsh. I'm curious now, I think I'll grab my 580 and pocketwizards and give it a try...

Edit:

So, I couldn't find my sync cord for the pocketwizards.. I made due with an off camera flash cord connected to the speedlight. Here's a sample with my 580 and a lumiquest softbox camera left and a piece of white paper for fill camera right.



If I had a permanent coin photography setup, I would definitely be using speedlights rather than continuous lighting. The one advantage with using continuous lighting, especially for beginners, is that you can move the position of the light and see the change to the coin in real time, without taking a bunch of test pictures.

 

i've got a diffuser for the 430ex but not the others. would you stick to one light to get the most of the shadows or more?

 

I think it depends on the coin and how you want to present it.

 

Does anyone have any new samples to add?