New coin, new to coin photography. Opinions?

Show me the lighting positioning? I just can't picture it

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I don't have real pictures right now, but I'll make a quick diagram. It's attached below. Basically, imagine that there's a line that goes from your light to the center of the coin. The luster "line" from that light will be perpendicular to that imaginary line. So if you put one light at the 90° position, then your luster line will be going straight across from side to side.

So now that you know that, you want these luster lines to cover as much of your coin. That means that you have to have more than one light. So, if you have two lights, you would put the lights at the 45° and 135° positions to make a sort of X. If you have three lights, you do the same but you squeeze the X down by moving the lights further to around 30° and 150°. Then you put one light directly at 90° or at 0° depending on if it has toning or anything like that. Remember to keep your light high up above the coin and the camera to make the luster lines thinner. It makes the luster look better. Also, always keep the background white or an eve color. I usually put a piece of paper under my coin. And last, always keep your camera and coin flat.

Now for the settings. Since you have a good Nikon DSLR, you can control anything and everything, which is good. I would recommend putting the 18-55mm lens on your Nikon D5200. Then, zoom the lens out all the way to around 40-55mm to get as much of the frame to be filled by the slab or the coin. Also, make sure your camera is either held by extremely steady hands (any slight shakiness will ruin the picture) or on a tripod (the better of the two options). Screw the camera in tight to the tripod to make sure it doesn't fall off. So first, move the big dial at the top of the camera to "M" for manual mode. Then go to the settings menu, and then put your aperture at around 7 to 9, your ISO at the lowest it can go (usually 100), and your shutter speed accordingly. Click the button for live view mode, and then you'll be able to see what it will look like. Your shutter speed would probably be 1/100. Also, never make your image look bright from your camera screen. It is better for it to be under-exposed than over-exposed because you can still retrieve the detail and color in post processing. I recommend that you go to YouTube and watch some photography videos. My favorite ones are Potato Jet and Josh Katz. Just watch their beginner photography videos and you'll be set with some basic background knowledge.

Now once you've taken your pictures, take out the memory card and plug it into your laptop or computer. If you have Apple, good, because I do too. Once you put the card in, it will pop up on your desktop. Don't do anything with that icon and just open up the Photos app. It should automatically bring you to the downloading page, where you will select the pictures you just took and then click download. Wait a bit and it'll download the pictures. Then, go back to All Photos, and double click on the first picture. On that, you can crop and adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and some other settings.

If you want to make your pictures even fancier and make it like mine (also attached below), then you need to make an account on Canva (canva.com) and create a new project with a template for a CD cover (square frame). Put your picture into the project and then use shapes to cover all the stuff around the coin. Make the shapes a single color that is not on the coin. Once it is all covered except for the coin, download the project. Then pull up https://onlinepngtools.com/create-transparent-png and drag and drop your downloaded picture into the box on the PNG Transparent website. Below, you enter the color that you used for the stuff around the coin and then enter the highest percentage before it starts to make parts of the coin black. Any part that is black will be made transparent. Anyway, save the transparent picture in your Downloads folder. Do the same for the other side. Open up another new project on Canva with a rectangular frame. Drag and drop your two saved transparent images and center them in the picture. If you want reflections, just copy and paste the two images below the original ones and make them more transparent. Anyway, play around with that and you'll get better over time.

Ok well I hope that helped you out! I just spent all of today writing this :| If you need any more help you can ask me. I would love if you could send me some of your revised pictures!

 

Well I switched some things up. I am still using my cell phone. I am very soon to get a macro lens. I think it will be better for the Nikon. I do have a tripod. I am experimenting with bulbs and have found daylight light cfl bulbs to be to my liking. I found this clamp light at the hardware store. Came with a hood I didn't like. Then I have a second on a lamp. But I think I'll get 2 more of these clamp lights. One for each tripod leg. But I have this 1887 Morgan and i think my pictures look better than the coin does in hand. I did no enhancement whatsoever.

 

For comparison, I have my picture of the obverse followed by the previous sellers then my picture of the reverse followed by the previous sellers. (Yes that is the exact same coin)

 

I shot these certified coin images using one indirect light above the coin, and second light below the coin. The slab was placed on a piece of white acrylic.

 

I have been using a plain white envelope for now. I don't yet have a cell mount for my tripod and am still using a ghetto prop. But working good. Maybe I'll get that cell mount