Agreed, I got his calendar for Christmas, I'm very excited to hang it on my wall. I always hope it'll spark discussion.
Photos taken with a Samsung Note 4 phone, inside a Dino-Lite photo box, cropping done with photoscape. click photos to enlarge
Out of curiosity, how close to the true color of the coins do you think you get with the dino-lite box? I've looked those up and they can be some serious $$!
Color has no bearing on a lightbox; you achieve appropriate color thru White Balance settings and can do that as easily in postprocessing as in-camera. Some day I'll shoot coins under a black light to prove my point. I'm no fan of lightboxes. They distort luster unless they're done perfectly, and adding diffusion right at the light itself is easier and more granular in application.
Thanks, and sorry, I meant more in terms of luster vs color of coin, I'm not sure why I chose the word color. That answers my question. I can't afford a dino-lite box anyhow, I was just curious. Thanks for the input
Luster requires direct lighting; avoiding washouts and even contrast requires indirect lighting. Bit of a conundrum.
I use two gooseneck CFL bulbs for my photos and it takes several adjustments and shots before I find the one I like
I'd like to see that, done with two jpeg file originals. One with correct white balance set in camera, the other adjusted in post from a wrong white balance. I have my doubts if you use jpeg as your source file. If you use raw files, you have more bits to fiddle with and it could work, though most folks aren't set up to edit raw files.
Same coin, same camera...different light amounts, orientation, backgrounds, etc. Even though the second one is much better, it could be better still if I had bothered to soften the light to avoid glare on the reverse. The point is that a lot has to do with technique used rather than equipment. Just look at the difference between both pictures of this coin using the same camera. Equipment used: Samsung Note 5 camera and some basic free editing software.
There are cases where it becomes near-impossible, like when the photographer uses lighting of multiple color temperatures, that it can only be done right in-camera. I learned that one the hard way. For all other cases, by the time you're using equipment capable of shooting RAW you should be shooting RAW. Consider the step of converting to that format to be part of the postprocessing capability. Other people's jpegs you can usually diddle with enough to achieve results acceptable here in-forum, for instance. I fully agree, there's still a garbage-in, garbage-out factor and a lower limit to what can be saved.
I don't want to add much to the thread, although I will answer specific questions anyone wants to answer. The one thing I do want to add is that point-and-shoot cameras can work well in an inexpensive setup (which includes cheap lights and a cheap tripod), but you need to make sure they can focus on a coin at an acceptable distance and magnification. If you can get your hands on a used, working Canon A800 from a few years ago, it should have great close-up capability, even when the lens in zoomed, giving you a nice working distance and good magnification. I base this statement on having looked at the specifications, however, not using the camera. One thing I notice about point and shoots when I pick one up to play with at Best Buy or Costco is that the close-focus capability, if the camera even has it, has been severely restricted on current cameras when compared with those from 3-4 years ago. (Edit: There's a Canon A800 on eBay for $13 shipped, and the seller states it's working. Camera looks beat up, but you only care about the results.)
They are expensive $199 retail, to be honest you could build your own for a lot less if your handy. Keep in mind we are set up to be able to image a lot of coins fast. The photo box allows us to quickly create a light environment that works for most coins. Our camera settings are full auto, with a 5 second timer on the shutter, the only editing we do is cropping. Long story short, my 12 year old daughter or anyone else that is using our set up can achieve the same results with no knowledge of photography. There are some coins that I have to spend extra time on to get the right colors, or use the Dino-Lite Microscope on RPM's, OMM's.....
Also, on point and shoot type cameras you can get adapters to use stackable magnification lenses but still you can only get about 7 to 8 inches away from the coins when using 6x lenses, but much better than having to have the lenses very close to the coin.
I have an iMac and in the past, when I tried taking photos of my coins, I would use Adobe Photoshop Elements. It's basically a lighter version of Adobe Photoshop. I used a macro lens with a DLR camera, a photo/copy stand, & lights but I could never get great shots. I would get ok/decent shots. I had 2 lamps to help with lighting but probably needed a difuser? I think that's what it's called. Basically something to soften the light as it could be too much especially when taking photos of proof coins. I decided it wasn't worth all the time, I would have to spend, in order to become really good at coin photography. I do admire the people that have spent the time and learned to take great coin photos. It's definitely a labor of love. As for the blurriness that happened to me when I used the camera shutter button to take the pic. What I did to get around this is to use the camera timer to take pics. Or if your camera has the option of attaching a remote control you can use that to take the pics. For the most part I just take photos with my iPhone. I use the photos to post online on CoinTalk or other coin groups I belong to. So the photos don't have to be super high quality. I'm satisfied with that. Just my two cents.
