Happy Sunday everyone! I finally found the missing items needed around the house and got around to trying out my hand at some better pictures. I still have some experimenting to do with the lighting, but I'm pleased with how it's coming along! A big thank you to everyone who contributed with my other post requesting help with photos! I'd still be fiddling with mediocrity without your help, and I wanted to say your help was appreciated and will not be forgotten!
Progress is great and you are doing that in spades. A couple of pointers for your consideration. The first rule of coin photography is have the coin in focus. I generally avoid the use of any auto-focus features especially when the coin is in a slab. Secondly, for coins with depth or cocked in the slab (you'd be surprised how many are tilted), use a numerically larger F-stop to achieve depth of field. The second rule is lighting. Here there are no hard and fast rules and experimentation is how you go about this. There's a typical tendency to overexpose and/or get too much glare. Your photos are showing too much glare and some shadowing due to the lighting being too directional. For reflective coins, it's often a tradeoff between image sharpness and showing the reflectivity. I sometimes take several photos with different lighting to show the different aspects of the coin. For some proof coins, I bet I've taken 50 photos of a particular coin trying to get it right and still failed. On a separate note and this is strictly about personal taste: I find busy backgrounds distract from the coin. You might find a highly recommended book of value: "Numismatic Photography" by Mark Goodman. He deals with everything I've mentioned and much more.
Thank you for your detailed reply! I currently only use the camera on my phone (s22 ultra) which I admit I am woefully inexperienced with. There are settings on it that I need to read up on and get familiar with, as well as other individual apps dedicated to using the camera to it's fullest potential. Doing this would be my most frugal means to capturing better images, as I am still more interested in using my spending money on acquiring more coins. I have access to all sorts of lighting, but it's generally meant for area lighting. I had a few smaller led lights that I was going to rig up on a electronic dimmer switch but I had to install them in a customer's house before I was able to try that out. I was able to use a ring light behind a diffuser (of sorts) but I agree on perhaps needing to diffuse the light more to reduce glare. As I come across other materials to play with the lighting, I'll be setting these aside for more trial-and-error attempts. All in all, I'm happy with how my pictures are coming along but wholly admit I am far from them being great examples. Thank you again for your help, and I'll see if I can get my hands on that book!
Photogs are a tad bit over exposed and a wee bit out of focus. When taking pictures back off a 1/3 to 2/3 of an f stop and compensate for it in the post processing procedure. Pay attention to the white balance......
