Coin Photography

I would suggest that you do not mix light sources as I have never had satisfactory results when attempting this and I believe it may have quite a bit to do with the temperature of light (spectrum emitted) and the cycle time of the bulb. You can raise your lights by using additional stands, piles of books, chairs or any old thing that might elevate the bulbs.

 

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F2.8 and ISO 50 supported by light.

 

http://krebsmicro.com/Canon_EFSC/index.html

 

The honest truth is, there's no substitution for experience.

I could tell you everything about my set-up, down to the smallest detail, and it wouldn't give you the same results. You need to start somewhere and simply experiment.

Skip the tricky, corner-case stuff, like axial lighting. Diffusion comes later. Begin with the basics, keep the camera as far from the coin as possible, focus on focus, use vertical lighting, and spend time at it.

You'll get there, eventually. The important thing is to not let frustration spoil the fun.
Lance.

 

Leadfoot: With all due respect, you're missing the most important point of rmpsrpms post. He said that ETSC makes a huge difference for variety shots. That means truly macro shots in the range of 1:1 to 4:1 magnification. For regular full-coin shots of 0.5:1 to 0.8:1 magnification, what you say is mostly correct. But, it doesn't matter how stable your mount is or if you use a time-delayed shot, in a Nikon camera the first shutter curtain "slap" happens after the time-delay and causes vibration that affects sharpness of final images even if mounted solidly and using a time-delay to avoid hand shake.


To the OP:
I think the most important things to avoid are light tents (they make images look really flat and lifeless), auto white-balance (it doesn't work), and axial lighting (it's what I consider a "niche" method -- and rarely produces an image true to the look of a coin). Many of the people who have replied are top notch coin photographers -- take their advice and practice, practice, and practice some more.

 

I think this is an excellent point. I take all my photos with a simple point and shoot camera. I purchased a DSLR but did not have the patience to perfect the new method and ended up selling the camera. Work on perfecting your method with the equipment that you have instead of trying to improve your equipment. Once you become an expert at the basics, then it becomes time to branch out to things like diffused and axial lighting which have very limited applications.

My advice is to save all of your photos in individual files for each coin and never delete a photo. When you take a second image of the same coin, having the old photo will give you indisputable evidence of the improvement in your imaging skills and provide a great boost in confidence.

 

Here's a toned Lincoln taken with the T2i:

 

double post

 

BEAUTIFUL SHOT! Must say, that's actually one of my all time favorite pics of a Lincoln. You captured the true character of that coin! I can even see a slight pink toning around the top of the head. Dang, and under 200k...amazing ....saving to disk.

 

Absolutely true. I only knew I had a problem with "shutter shake" with the D7000 was because I did a long exposure with a delay to the lighting and my shots were suddenly very sharp. But the only way to achieve that result without tremendous effort is to use flash, which is a tough sell for coin photos. So while it's true that it's possible to get the same result from Nikon, the compromises I needed to make with the workflow and lighting flexibility were not worth the effort.

 

I find that even for 0.8:1 (Cent shots), shutter shake kills the pixel-level sharpness. Around 0.4:1 (Dollar shots), the difference is very small and you need to pixel peep to see it. Note that it is possible to delay the flash until after the first shutter curtain opens on Nikons, so you can simulate the effect of EFSC, but you must use flash. I simulated it by setting light levels for a 2-sec exposure, then set the shutter for 3-sec. I turned off the lights, pressed the shutter release, waited 1-sec, turned on the lights, and got a 2-sec exposure. Gives a very sharp result and allowed me to have my lighting like I wanted it. But it's not much fun.

 

Thanks! I found that in an OBW roll. A total of 19 coins were dramatically toned. This was one of the nicer ones.

 

Here's a detail shot at 5x of the mintmark on that 57-D cent. This was with the T2i again. At this magnification, my D7000 was a disaster.

 

Double-checked my notes and the shot above was actually at 3x and then cropped...

The lens was a 3x Nikon Measuring Microscope objective on bellows, same as the one used with the T2i. It's a wonderful lens, with excellent sharpness and color fidelity, super long working distance, and a reasonable aperture.

 

Thanks Guys,

I tried the suggestions of moving my lights back and I gave silent mode a shot. No diffuser used. I believe I got more detail out of the shot
















































Here is the central shield detail.

 

That looks wonderful. I really like how lit up the coin is, you can see every single detail and that's what I like in my photography, when every aspect of the coin is lit, I try to get rid of dark spots by angling the light more than 90 degrees in some cases.

 

This is an uncropped image taken with a D7000 scaled down in size.

I have never had an issue with close-ups and the D7000. I need to loom for some higher magnification images that match the 57-D image better. In the past I have gotten down to a digit or 2 on the Morgan date and not had an issue.

 

That image is around 1.5x, so a 100% pixel crop should show a pretty good indication of what I'm talking about. I'll take some pics with my D7000 and T2i and post the comparison maybe a bit later tonight.

Note that my concern is not the overall look of the shot but how far down into it you can go for detail. When I changed from D7000 to T2i, I was in the middle of evaluating lenses, and the differences between lenses was obscured by the pilel level detail being obscured by the D7000. The T2i gave me enough sharpness that I was able to tell the differences between lenses again!

 

OK...Here's the comparison.

Subject is a MS65 DMPL 1883CC Morgan Dollar. Lens is a 3x Nikon objective. Lighting is by a single diffused Jansjo LED, which has a color temp around 3000K. I used Tungsten white balance (3200K I believe) on both cameras.

DOF at 3x is insufficient for a single image, so I did a simple 3-image stack. I did the same workflow for both cameras:

Focus on top of denticles; shoot;
Focus on top of date features; shoot
Focus on field around date; shoot
Focus Stack using CZP (Quick Align; Do Stack algorithms)
Crop to original size (CZP adds extra pixels)
Downsize 4x for full frame web publishing
100% crop 800x800 for pixel-level comparisons

No sharpening at any point

Here is the Nikon D7000: Full field and 100% Detail:


And here is the T2i: Full field and 100% Detail


Note that the full frame images are not much different. Color rendition is a bit different but within a reasonable range. Both images are pretty sharp, and either one is acceptable. A bit of post-downsize sharpening, which is a normal thing to do (I did not sharpen on purpose for better differentiation), would make them completely adequate for most purposes.

But the 100% pixel images are a different story. This lens is nowhere near the sharpest available, yet the differences between cameras completely swamp any weakness in the lens.

Now, I could have used a flash with delayed trigger, and with a single light like I've used that would be an option. However, getting a flash in "close" and "high" is a tough proposition, and I'm not willing to make those tradeoffs if I get them for free with the EFSC functionality of the T2i.