Featured Advanced Coin Photography

Thanks for sharing Denis--your photos and technique are excellent! The approach to axial lighting was creative. I'd like to ask you what benefit the black Backdrop on the right of the setup has on your results, and if it is always fixed in place for every situation. Gary

 

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Sorry for the delay in replying, but I didn't receive a notification of your comment. Thank you and I'm happy you like the images. The black board to the right is a piece of black velvet wrapped around cardboard. It absorbs the light that passes through the glass stops any reflections from bouncing back up into the camera from the other side of the glass.

 

I wish to thank the professionals and amateurs alike (with one notable exception) for the incredible information on virtually every aspect of coin photography. Much of the methodology presented is way above my level at this time, but I have learned so much and I will surely be able to apply a lot of this to my efforts, a bit at a time, and potentially increase my (minimal!) skills to the point of acceptable coin photography. I am grateful to you all!

 

IMPRESSIVE

 

Bumping an old thread that I just came across. I agree completely! The info shared by these photographers is exceptional, whether you want to shoot with axial lighting or not. I especially love seeing pics of the photographers' setups, and the results of their techniques with pics of the coins they shot (white background vs grey vs black, axial vs direct, jpg vs RAW, etc.). I'm an amateur, or maybe pre-amateur, but I'm writing down some of what was shared and am going to try some different things, next time I get the time to set up the camera and shoot some coin pics! Whether you're shooting for cataloging/documentation of your collection, or ebay sales, or artful presentation, there's a ton of valuable information here!

Sorry the thread died - I want to learn more!

 

If anyone wants to see my setup in person, I'll have it at the Central States and ANA summer shows. If you catch me when I'm not busy, I could go into detail and give you a demo or quick lesson of some sort.

 

If you've read this far, you've already seen my basic lighting setup. That was a couple of years ago, and naturally, thousands of coins later, my setup is still evolving. Every shot is a balance of lighting power, colour, direction, quality, diffusion, and reflection control. Of course, getting perfect exposure is critical. Keep it in the histogram. These are the results I get these days.





I shot this recently (below). For the purists, there's no shadow or background colour to complain about.



I can't say the same for this one, but in my defence, it gives it excellent depth. Which would you prefer your coin to look like?

 

Why wouldn't you shoot raw?[/QUOTE]

I don't know...

Remember the days of one-hour photos? You took your shots to the lab, and they processed them according to their machines. If the machines were off, so were your images. That's like letting your camera's jpg algorithm decide how your images should look. It gives away control over them.

That said, nowadays, the algorithm is usually pretty good, so I don't shoot everything in raw. I take family snap images in jpg, and I just shoot professionally in raw.
Professional photographers shoot in raw because they need to. Their work requires a level of control and flexibility that can only be achieved by shooting in a raw format. In much the same way, a Ferrari doesn't have an automatic transmission. However, if that's not where you want to invest your time, and it takes time, there is no need to shoot in raw. Your goal should be getting the best-quality images possible and one that is suitable for your intended purpose.

You just won't know what you're missing.

 

Awesome photos, Denis! And, thanks for starting this thread and sharing your knowledge as a professional photographer!

I guess it all comes down to what you're doing with your photos and how you want to present your coins. When I look at your "Presentations" page on your site: https://hipshotphotography.com/image-gallery I see that the artful possibilities are endless, and hope to do some of that, some day, with my better coins (that is, IF I even have any coins worthy of "artful presentation")! Right now, I'm inventorying my collection (which is going to take quite some time!), and will be taking mostly "Documentation" type photos (straight on, obverse, reverse, obverse slab, reverse slab, and maybe some details for VAM's, varieties, errors), and importing those photos into my coin software. For my "decent" coins, I do want to take very nice shots to show the beauty of the coin as I see it in hand (luster, color, details incl. blemishes). For my lower-grade coins, I don't need "expert-level" photos - just good, crisp, clear photos showing the coin for what it is.

I guess it's time for me to start shooting in RAW, and learning how to edit RAW photos! I don't have the Adobe Suite and am unwilling to pay for it at this time (retired and on the wife's budget until I can convince her that we're ok on our funds for the rest of our retirement), so I'm using FREE software for my editing purposes. Right now, PhotoScape X seems to be my favorite photo editing software (I also have Paint.net, GIMP, which I don't think does RAW, and Krita, and Darktable). But, I have no idea how much control over RAW photos any of these has. It will be a learning process, for sure! But, when the time comes to image my collection, I will put in the effort to learn!

Please feel free to keep this thread going, if you and the other experienced photographers like @jtlee321, @messydesk, @ldhair, @rmpsrpms, etc. would like to continue discussing professional photography, I'd LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to sit back and read all of the knowledge you all are willing to share!!! Hopefully, this thread doesn't deteriorate too much by us inexperienced picture-takers, or by the in-fighting that happened earlier!

Thanks again @Denis Richard and others. Please, PLEASE keep discussing among yourselves!

 

Central States is in Illinois in April, correct? I'm going to try to make it there - if for no other reason than to meet you, John, and pick your brain on your photography techniques, AND on Morgan Dollars!!!

 

My setup has evolved quite a bit since this thread went cold a couple years ago. I'm now using a Sony A7Rm4 and have shifted over to a stacking setup based on a microscope focus block. I built this system for higher magnification use to do phono stylus imaging, but eventually found that it was flexible enough for coin variety use, and then for full-coin use, and most recently for imaging of record grooves. So it is my primary system now, replacing the older ones based on linear rail stacking. I posted a thread back in Apr '22 showing the system, and it still looks pretty much the same today:

https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=44877

I was still flummoxed by the discussion of RAW, but I do finally understand what is going on. My concern was always that folks claimed highlights and shadows were recoverable with RAW, but of course this is physically impossible. However, after some discussions, it became clear that those who make the claim are actually shooting with reduced exposure, ie "Exposing To The Left", or ETTL. I surmised this earlier in the thread, but the wild claims of recovery didn't seem to include such under-exposure. Time and experience has shown that indeed it must be the case, and that ETTL is the explanation. Of course shadows are lost with this method since there are only so many bits of information available, but there is the benefit of shorter exposure times, so perhaps that balances out. For me, I still prefer ETTR, with compensation to avoid over-exposure, but at least I understand what's going on with RAW now.

I've added a few more Hi-Res photos to my online library, but am still very slow to flesh-out a broader offering since I have to host these via 3rd party. I do plan eventually to update my website to include a large zoom viewer, but til then I continue to use EasyZoom for these. Here is a recent image of a 1950-D RPM-003 that I traded for. Tough coin to find, so I decided to shoot it in Hi-Res for folks to have a complete reference for the variety:

https://easyzoom.com/image/581867/album/0/4?mode=manage

 

In the world of photography, there is an endless variety of lighting scenarios. The world's dynamic range is far broader than any camera system can manage. I'm talking about shooting a glistening waterfall under intense midday sun or the setting sun over a deep, shadowed valley. Shooting in RAW won't miraculously let you capture these images in one shot. Nothing will. But you can shoot multiple exposures and blend them with luminosity masks.

To state the obvious, coin photographers are not shooting waterfalls. We're shooting coins in an environment we have complete control over, with adjustable lighting. We control the dynamic range of our scene. It is seldom, if ever, that a coin's dynamic range is wider than my camera's capture ability, so there's really no reason we can't get a perfect exposure every time. So why capture the image in raw? Because editing the entire dynamic range of your image will improve the final result. You can expand it in the case of a very flat looking coin, or compress it as you see fit to match the coin.

These are my defaults when I open an image in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). Since every coin is different, these are the only setting I apply to all images.

I shoot with studio lights, so ARC automatically sets my colour temp to flash.
It also makes lens profile corrections based on the Nikkor 105 lens I use, and removes chromatic aberrations. If you've ever shot anything against a bright white background you'll notice the magenta and cyan artifacts around the perimeter of your subject. These are chromatic aberrations. They are not always present but annoying when they are.

Then I tweak every image - yes, every image needs editing no matter how perfect the capture. I start with a combination of some of the following settings.

Exposure
Contrast
Highlights
Shadows
Whites
Blacks
Saturation
Vibrance
Texture
Clarity
Dehaze
Sharpening
Noise Reduction

This is just in the BASICS panel, but there are others too. The more I fine tune it in ACR the less is required in Photoshop. I can also undo or reset any of these setting with no affect on the image data.

Generally speaking, ancient coins need subtle dehaze, lifting the shadows and saturation, but every coin is different, so the settings are never the same.


This required a lot of highlight control in ARC as well as an separate technique in Photoshop.

This is almost right out of camera, with minor tweaks to highlights, saturation and texture.


In the end, editing in raw is a choice that will only improve your coin images, but it comes with a cost, in both time and money.

 

Here's something different for this advanced coin photography thread. The year of the snake. A composite of bullion coins and snake skin. It's supposed to catch your eye when your scrolling. Is anybody else in this community doing this kind of work?






The shot below is right out of camera. A single light at a fairly low angle, with diffuser (not a soft box) at the top of the image. I wanted deep shadows.

 

Lol. I still own a couple of these. Tho others have gone. I'm far less active in numismatics as my life very different. And busy

 

One of the very few shots I've done that wasn't a single coin straight on. Shot this in 2009, which is one camera body ago.

 

I shoot a lot of coins in different positions for different purposes. Here are a few examples.



A bullion website banner.



The Canadian puzzle coin image below is a composite of 24 images- 3 sets of 7 image focus stacks, each with a different exposure and lighting objective, and 3 background elements.