How do you get such good pictures?

Simple

http://www.cointalk.com/t76914/
Try this thread.

 

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Dang, Dok. How the devil did I miss your thread? And I got a ton o' Dinty Moore in the cupboard........

 

You want a dark room and lighting high, nearly directly over the coin. I get best results with halogen. Don't mix lighting types.

It takes a lot of practice and experimenting with lighting angles and amount, and often "correction" with post-processing software (white balance, exposure, color, contrast, etc.).
Lance.

 

Absolutely agree. Color adjustment and brightness/contrast needs to be corrected. I do it until the coin looks like it does in hand and is as near a perfect representation of the coin as you can get. Some people disagree with this method, but I feel the more true to life it is, the better. How can that be bad?

Also, that's a beauty of a half doll. Those warm colors make me feel all fuzzy inside.

 

Caz.. You actually need some lighting adjustment. I am nto sure if you are usng a flash or not, but turn it off if yo uare. Also, find the setting for 'white balance' on the camera. Take a few pictures of the same coin with the different white balance settings. Give it a shot!

 

Are light boxes good or bad for coin photos? My guess is that nearly-direct light is better, is that right?

 

I have found that my pics turn out better when not using the light box. Direct light personally works better for me.

 

My Lighting set up.


Those three Ott's are for bright copper.

BTW the Camera I use is a Nikon D90 with a Nikon Nicor 105 lens or the 18 to 105 zoom for slab shots..

I will also note that Photography was my one of my hobby's before I got into coins along with perusing four legged creatures for the larder.

 

Holy smokes. That is one heck of a setup. But can we agree all that is not needed to get "decent" pictures?

 

Sure you don't need to go this far but that was not the OP question.
If you look in the lower left you can see how things can progress. The one thing that I do see as required to get started on decent images is a stand for the camera hand held gets blurry images.

 

Agreed. I wasn't dissing your setup or saying it was too extreme, so you know. Your camera and setup takes coin photography to a much higher and professional level. I am envious of what you have there, and the camera/lens you are using.
By the way, I have an ott, but never tried it for coin imaging. You mention you use it for bright copper. Can you expand on that a little more? Do you use it in addition to all the other lights, or soley the otts?

 

All the others are turned off and I use the three Otts solely. The wave length of the 5500 Kelvin lights seems to work bringing out the true color of the copper coins better.
Did a bunch of experimenting when I was building a Memorial set a couple of years ago.
Example...

 

Copper does give me issues. I will definetly try the ott. I suppose I could invest in a couple more. Great image on that memorial.

 

Before you go out and spend money on lighting read this article by the man who wrote the book on coin photography (Mark Goodman).
http://browncopper.com/Lighting_shootout.html

In fact, if you are serious about learning to shoot good photos, just like learning to be a smart collector, buy the book first. Numismatic Photography, by Mark Goodman.

There are pro's and con's to each kind of lighting. Thankfully, they can usually be corrected post-processing. And there's nothing wrong with this. People forget that the camera makes built-in adjustments too. The goal is simply to achieve realistic images.
Lance.

SHOT WITH 180mm Macro and D-SLR, Halogen lighting, on a copy stand and processed with Apple Aperture 2 software:

 

Wow, the color really pops on that copper. Now, would you do anything differently if you were not shooting through a slab?

Thanks for the link. Very informative.

 

Yeah, with my camera I own, I couldn't get it right even on macro settings, so I had to do it at an angle to get even, non-shadowed pictures.

 

Thanks to all who mentioned Photoscape to me! I have been really enjoying it and have been doing some cropping.
xc

 

Both the obverses look great in those pics! Nice job with the photoscaping action too.

 

Nothing different. But I love not having to deal with slabs. I spend too much time polishing scratches out, compensating for coins crooked in their holders, and toying with lighting. Raw coins are a joy to shoot.
Lance.

 

I tried some different lighting techniques, prompted by this thread. I feel it was a huge improvement. Here are 2 I re-shot. originals were from last year. The difference in the actual color representation is huge. They are now near perfect color as in hand. Obviously the detail quality has gotten much better too.

Original:


Reshoot


Original #2 (color is way off)


Reshoot #2