Coin Photography

Am finally upgrading my Canon Rebel xSI DSLR Camera w/ 100mm Canon Macro Lens and have made the jump to a D90 with 150mm Sigma lens. I hear the quality in photos could be quite a difference. I know a lot of good coin photography and photographers swear by their lighting setup and their angling of it. How many of you here on the forum are active coin photographers? Maybe do it for a living or just as a hobby. If you do, key this slightly confused aspiring photographer (me) in on why I'm having difficulty bringing the color out of the full coin and not just have parts shaded in due to the light not really hitting those areas of the coin. I'd love to keep this thread productive on coin photography tips maybe not as often mentioned in the Mark Goodman book, that we can all kinda speak about here, but first, I must know, if I may start, what am I doing that I should be doing??

Thanks,

Jay

 

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You will love the Sigma 150. Great lens. As far as color, it's all about lighting. I just keep moving them around till I find that spot. Have fun.

 

I'm not sure your results with the D90/Sigma 150 will differ much from the Rebel/Canon 100, they're both more than capable of quality shots. As ldhair commented above, it's all about the lighting. Try using mutiple lights or reflector cards to fill in the shadows.

This shot was with a Canon 40D and Sigma 150 using a single light as the main light camera left and a white reflector to fill shadows at camera right:

 

You probably already know about this technique, but axial lighting works great.

 

Keep it simple. To many people add more than is needed with diffusers, gimmicks, axial when not necessary.

 

I couldn't agree more, use the KISS method for coin pictures. Use a lighting setup that allow you a lot of freedom to adjust the position relative to the coin. This lets you bring out features and color for each specific coin.

OP - It's ALL about the lighting. Sure, I nice camera makes for super detailed and very crisp images, but for most web purposes and expensive camera is overkill IMO. For what I use my setup for, which costs less than $150, I'm able to take "good enough" pictures for the intended purpose. I have a better camera, but for coins I prefer my old 6MP Canon SD700IS. Here's some examples of pictures from my poorman's setup:

 

I have heard you say this before, and I am a bit confused on the part on diffusers. For a dark coin, yes, there are no issues and a good image can be shot with no diffuser, but if you are shooting a brilliant coin with luster, without a diffuser, it seems the brilliance and luster just washes out the detail of the coin. I just have many problems shooting such a coin without a diffuser.

Now the diffusers I use are simple, they are just paper napkins , and depending on how many "sheets" of the napkin I use, I can control the level of brilliance vs. detail. So the question really is how do you get a nice shot of a brilliant coin without a diffuser?

Here is a coin I shot with a diffuser, and I believe I have controlled the brilliance vs. detail correctly. What would you have done different? BTW, you (or anybody) can be brutally honest, my feelings cannot be hurt

 

Nice picture Mike!

To overcome the glare from a brilliant coin, I move the light futher away, change the light angle and sometimes use a lower ISO setting.

 

Thanks Thad,

I haven't played around much with the distance of the lighting, maybe I will mess around with that a bit.

 

I fail to see what the diffuser is accomplishing here. I think if you played with the lights you would get more even lighting and not have the dark areas. Some coins you cant get rid of dark areas but most you can.

 

Ok, I will try again with just the lighting. On your coin, you have plenty of detail, but it seems when I shoot a brilliant coin without diffusion, I don't get that, I just lose all detail in the glare. Back to the copy stand

Mike

 

Not to be a party-pooper, but based on my experience, the XSi may actually give you better results than the D90. The XSi has EFSC, a feature that Nikon still hasn't implemented. I use a T2i for most of my work and it was a big step forward vs my D7000, especially for variety shots. I published some comparisons on a couple other coin forums if you are interested. I do mostly Cents, which are much tougher than Dollars to image with good sharpness. If you do mostly Dollars, you probably won't see much difference between the cameras. Note however that even with Dollars, you will need to be more careful of your aperture with the higher megapixel camera. The higher the pixel count for same size sensor, the smaller the pixels, and tougher it is for your lens. Now, your new lens will likely be a good upgrade not for quality but for working distance, especially if you are shooting Dollars. The longer working distance will give you more lighting flexibility.

Note that I'm not a Nikon or Canon person. I use my D7000 for general use and for outdoor macro shots. But the EFSC feature of Canon make it the superior choice for studio macro work.

 

Welcome to the world of coin photography! I find imaging coins to be my favorite part about the collecting hobby. For the record, I use a point and shoot camera, two flexible desk lamps with regular bulbs, and no tripod or copy stand.

Anyway, it is just a hobby for me, but here's my two-cents:

I agree completely with this:

It took me quite a long time to finally get the hang of it. I tried so many countless tricks and setups. In the end, it all circled back to the basic setup I mentioned above. I realized that learning how to use the camera and it's settings, in conjunction with small light position changes, was the key.
It will vary from coin to coin. It all depends on the surface luster, color, and what you are trying to accomplish. Some people like to show blazing luster, while others try and show the surface and color more. This is all dependent on the lighting, white balance and brightness.

It's very difficult to give advice on how to take great pictures. Peoples ideas of a "great" picture will certainly vary.
So all I can say is practice. Take a series of images of the same coin, and each time change the lighting position slightly while changing the brightness/contrast settings a lot to see what works best for you.

Good luck! Can't wait to see the images.

-greg

Some examples with my simple setup:

 

That's my setup currently. I could nail bright white coins with this but when it comes to color, proofs, and darker coins, it can be a real challenge getting it right where I can bring the true look of the coin out.

 

Awesome pics gbroke!!

 

I agree with others who think there's not going to be much difference between your old and new setup.

What's more important is (a) lighting techniques / camera positioning and (b) controlling your camera's rendition of color and exposure. That is generally best done through experimentation, but a book or two will give you a head start, as will threads like this.

 

With all due respect, EFSC is solving a problem that doesn't exist in cameras that are properly mounted and the exposure time delayed. That's not saying you've not seen an improvement in your pics, but rather the underlying problem could have been solved without changing systems.

 

I bolded a section in the quote above because it is spot on. You MUST use custom white balance to get proper colors of a coin, and you SHOULD use the manual controls for shutter/aperture/ISO. The shiny surfaces, especially silver/nickel type coins, will throw both the auto white balance and the auto exposure meter off and give you poor results. Learn your camera before buying any new gear. New gear won't help you at this point.

 

Both cameras and lenses will work well for you if you want to image coins. I would suggest finding a lighting style or alignment that works well for most pieces and then changing or tweaking as required. Some of your shadows may be due to the gasket around slabbed coins and the angle of lighting can help minimize this.

 

Yeah see I have spent a couple of hours tweaking my lights to bring out the most well lit look of the coin, I've tried different light bulb types, and let me share with what I've learned from doing it.

Halogen Lightbulbs for me are my top pick when it comes to me doing quick shots of my coins and their slabs mainly because of the brightness of them. I like Halogen bulbs because they are noticeably brighter so at least I can tone down the exposure by lowering the ISO and other settings of the camera. The drawback to Halogens through what I've experienced, are they get hot, real hot. 8/10, brighter light flow, but hot.

Incandescent: I've used regular 60 watt incandescent light bulbs and didn't like how dull the light flow was. I tried a combination of one Halogen and two Incandescents and wasn't really getting the exposure I was looking for. The coin came out pretty dull and had to do a lot of editing after to make it look somewhat like the actual coin did. Just by themselves, my experience with these bulbs hasn't been too great. 5/10

Compact Fluorescent: I really like these light types, they are bright and cool in temp, but not as bright as Halogens, but also a lot cooler than Halogens. I am currently using two of them in Two gooseneck lamps with One Halogen overhead light. This combination really brings out the color and the surfaces of the coin real nicely. 7/10

I still have to work on my angling of the lights in general, try different combos, mess around with the certain levels and settings, but I think once the D90 comes in, at least I can start fresh on a new camera and work with something ergonomically speaking which feels overall better in my hands than the XSI does.

Question... How high do some of you raise your lights in feet? My goosenecks are about a foot high above the copy stand, maybe I should try getting some table lamps with longer necks.