I recently bought this MS68 Mercury Dime and I am really surprised how different it looks depending on the lighting conditions and angles. The three images below are all of the same coin. IMAGE #1 This first image was made with seller supplied photos as it appeared on the auction web site. I think this is the view as it was captured by NGC when they graded the coin as part of their certification look-up process. I imagine they used a pricey SLR camera. IMAGE #2 This second image was made by me (iPhone) where I had angled some glare from bright indirect sunlight off the coin. This lighting condition appears to have maximized the color and color variation. It's interesting how the green took on a lot of blue overtones with this lighting. IMAGE #3 This third image was also made by me (iPhone), but this time it was taken in an area where there was no glare at all, only diffuse indirect sunlight. This lighting condition appears to have done a better job capturing the reflectivity (shine) of the coin. It's really interesting to me how difficult this coin was to capture (I took at least 150 shots) and how different it looks at various viewing angles. My iPhone had a hard time focusing for some reason (maybe because the coin was small? or perhaps because the coin sits behind the plastic slab by a good 1/8" inch and my auto-focus was fixated on the plastic slab instead of the coin?) Vote Now: Which image do you like the best and why?
I say the first one does the best job of balancing grade, luster, and color. The second makes the coin look like it is severely lacking luster, and the third is just too dark. Just my opinion, and for the record I suck at taking photos. How do you do the reflection in the images of yours Winged? How do you get the black background? As you can see I know next to nothing about coin photography.
I think Number 1 is by far the best, neither the details, luster, or toning is outweighed by one of the other. I think number2 looks god-awful, it looks as if it was nuked in a microwave.....
thanks for all the responses, this is helpful! zach, your comment made me laugh! nuked in a microwave!! that's great. medoraman, I use Abobe Photoshop to create the image composites. Photoshop allows you to put a bunch of image elements into various layers of a single new image which you can them manipulate (move around) independent of each other. Once you have a photo of a coin from a camera, one can cut out just the coin using a circular cut and paste tool ... then paste that free floating coin over top of a black background in a new layer. To do the reflection I simply take the coin image and do a "rotate canvas, flip canvas vertical" (which is an option in the pulldown menu) then re-size the flipped image in the vertical direction only (making the flipped image thinner). then i set the opacity of the flipped image to 75% (which makes it look more like a reflection). I think these types of manipulations can be done with almost any graphics package (even ones cheaper than Photoshop).
What you need to do is get a real camera. Then you practice. Trying to take pictures of coins teaches you a thousand times as much as you can ever learn by just looking at pictures of coins.
I like the 1st one the best, the second one is terrible, and the third one is alright. It's hard to photograph coins, let alone the toning. I've tried to capture toning before and it is very hard, and I use a nice little Canon digital camera. Like GDJMSP said, taking the pictures yourself will educate you alot more and better than just looking at the pictures.
Good Advice GDJ and CoinGuy. I just took a pile more pictures so I have a 4th image. I am amazed how much the colors change depending on the lighting angle. It's really fun to practice and try to improve. Photographing some coins is exceedingly difficult.
Yeah I love very high grade Mercs. And that 4th picture is very nice for a first timer, and just by the looks of it, I'd have a heck of a time trying to capture all of the toning.
Toned coins have always been harder to grade and photograph. I would understand your frustration Winged. This is another reason I always loved buying toned coins, since many dealers either didn't want to grade them, discounted the grade to allow for unforeseen problems on the coin, and couldn't photograph them well. This was the reasons they sold at a discount in the past because they were harder to "handle". I still buy toned ancients and get pleasant grade surprises that the toning hid on the photograph, (toned sections can look weak in the details on a photograph).
And it's not just the colors - everything changes ! Make sure you remember that when buying coins based on pictures
I just wanted to follow up on this thread. I sent this hard to photograph Mercury Dime to a professional coin photographer (the recent winner of a number of coin photo contests ... John (a.k.a. MessyDesk) at VarSlab.com) and he really did a great job with it. I just wanted to show the difference it can make when you have coin professionally photographed. This is by far my favorite photograph of this coin -- finally an image that captures the color, luster, and detail of this MS68 gem. This is about as hard a coin to photograph as I've come across. IMAGE #5
Plus he's a really nice guy and a true authority when it comes to Morgans. And for those of you who like his pictures, he sells coin calendars every year
