Featured When High Resolution Hurts: The Case for Showing Less

I once photographed a coin so clearly that the images couldn’t be used. It sounds counterintuitive, but I ran into exactly that situation while photographing a commemorative coin series for a private mint. The lesson changed how I approach certain commercial photography projects.



As a coin photographer, I naturally focus on capturing every detail. I always aim for sharper images and clearer definition, zooming in to 100%, almost like it’s a reflex. But it’s worth asking: when does clarity stop being helpful? When does the camera show more than the product should reveal?

A few years ago, a private mint in Texas hired me to photograph two commemorative proof sets, each with twelve coins. The coins were made of base metal and about the size of a silver dollar. One set was gold-plated and the other was silver-plated, making twenty-four coins in all. Each coin, along with its capsule and clamshell case, sold for about $12.

They wanted everything: individual hero shots, photos of the coins in their cases, group images, banners, and website headers. That was fine with me.

Given the product's price point, I asked them to send multiple sets so I could select the best examples of each coin. I asked for unopened coins only. No samples that had been in and out of the capsules. Proof coins are brutally honest in high res. Dust particles, hardly invisible to the eye, become boulder-sized. I’ve been down this road. Cleaning that up in post-production is time-intensive and expensive, so it's best to start where you want to finish, with pristine coins.

When the sets arrived, they looked great inside their capsules. The coins were bright and shiny, with frosted designs standing out against mirrored backgrounds.


Their current images

On their website, the collection’s promo images were 3D renderings. It was clear they weren’t real coins, but they looked good enough and accurately reflected the coin’s design.


I set up my dynamic axial lighting, which I use for most raw coins and especially for mirrored or prooflike surfaces. I always put on a fresh pair of black nitrile gloves before handling coins, just like a doctor getting ready for surgery. With gloves on, I took the first coin out of its capsule and placed it under the camera. Everything looked good through the viewfinder, so I took the shot.


Since I shoot tethered, the images appeared on my monitor right away. The first photos looked good. The mirror finishes came out well, and I saw nice gradients across the surfaces. I kept going and finished the whole series.


Coin image at 800 × 800 pixels, website presentation size

The real surprise came during editing, when I compared my photos to the mint’s renderings. I expected some differences, but not such a big gap. The renderings had sharp lines, deep details, and intricate designs. My photos, on the other hand, looked like they’d been cast in sand.


Side-by-side comparison of the rendering and my coin image, at 100%.

I figured the coins were plated after being struck, so I expected them to lose some sharpness. But what I saw was much worse than that. Whole layers of fine detail in the renderings just weren’t there on the real coins. I assumed renderings were concept art, but they showed a coin that the real product couldn’t match.

When I sent the images to the client, they were surprised. They liked the technical quality of the photos but were disappointed with the content.


The clamshell cases had the same issue.

In the manufacturer’s renderings, the printed logo inside the lid looked sharp and elegant. In my photos, you can see the ink sitting unevenly on the fabric, slightly blurring. Things your eye glosses over in hand are uncomfortably evident here. Like the old saying about a silk purse and a sow’s ear, high-resolution photography does not perform miracles.

In the end, the mint decided not to use the individual hero shots or close-up clamshell images on their website. They still paid for them, though.

On the bright side, they used the group and banner shots—any images where the fine details weren’t as noticeable.



The lesson here is simple, and I tell customers this whenever I get a similar project that crosses my desk. In numismatic photography, more detail usually means more value; however, the goal is to serve the product. There are situations when the most technically accurate image isn’t the most useful for selling. So before you go for maximum resolution, consider whether the product can handle that level of detail.

Because sometimes the lens tells the truth a little too loudly.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

You make an interesting point @Denis Richard. It's very true, too - a fine, quality photograph is a wonderful thing, but it can sometimes look worse than the coin looks in hand. The eye tends to blend or airbrush out tiny imperfections that come out very sharply in a picture.

 

SO true!

Thanks for your typically well-laid out, detailed presentation -- replete with beautiful numismatic images!

Like I say when someone complains that a picture I took of them makes them look too short... or too fat... or too old... or too whatever:

"Camera don't lie."

 

Bravo Denis on a most marvelous presentation. As to the 'graininess' of your photogs compared to the mint renderings.....could that be because of laser etching on the mints' part? And then their AI enhancement? One thing I know most supreme and that is the fact that photos (when done well, such as you have) do not lie. The product is lacking, and not your photographs.

 

I often lament PCGS true views for this reason. They make small spots eye sores when the coin in hand is not nearly as plagued as the true view would suggest.

 

Thank you. I'm not sure how they arrived at the final product. They might have laser-etched them. They didn't share any production details with me. We spent more time talking about whether we should shoot them another way.

 

True. A fellow on LinkedIn told me that during his Royal Mint days, approval for a new proof coin always came down to the naked eye. Loupes were used to check for defects and striking issues, but they passed coins based on how people would see them in real life. So I asked him how they advertised the coins. I haven't had an answer yet.

 

Though far from being a professional photographer, I have photographed my coins for many years. I agree that too fine detail detracts from the actual "look" of the coin. In my opinion the best images are those that show the coin as a collector would see it. That's also true with a magnifying glass...more isn't always better.

Bruce

 

Your shots look good, and from what I can see there are only a few areas worth thinking about.

First is enlargement. What resolution was the dealer’s image to start? How much are you zooming in when you compare it to yours? Almost any image looks great as a thumbnail. Once you enlarge it, that’s when the real differences start to show.

Second is lighting, which is almost always the factor that makes or breaks a coin photo. The dealer’s image appears to have been lit with softer light—possibly with the diffuser placed farther from the light source. That kind of setup tends to smooth things out and avoids emphasizing surface marks. Whether that was intentional or serendipitous is hard to say, but it’s a useful approach if the goal is to keep fine surface detail from standing out too much. I’d also guess, from the brighter area in the field, that your lights were positioned closer to the coin. Do you remember roughly how far away they were—just a few inches, or closer to a few feet?

Finally, there’s the question of how much detail was captured in the first place. As you mentioned, if the dealer photographed the coin while holding it at arm’s length, the camera simply couldn’t record much fine detail to begin with. In that case, the image will naturally look smoother because that information was never captured in the frame.

 

These photos look awesome! Unless one is hiding defects to sell a coin, these are GREAT! Now overexposed photos doing just that....... Auction Kings, Southern Coin, and MK Coins have entered the chat.

 

Good info and good points, Denis. Product shots must serve the product. Exposing a customer to too much detail can inadvertently show just how little detail there is, or worse, inviting the viewer into a forest of microscopic defects that really don't matter. Given enough magnification, every coin is ugly. Graders only pull out magnification greater than 5x if a potential issue requiring further investigation catches their eye. I usually use no magnification when grading, leveraging my nearsightedness. When people are looking at full-size TrueViews to scrutinize the quality of a coin, they need to take a few steps back from their monitor.

My goal when shooting any coin is to take a picture that would get the coin sold quickly, not leave any money on the table, and not have it returned. It's an optimization problem. Here's my latest shot of a coin I just bought.

 

As I am usually photographing ancient coins I find the high glare of modern coins hard to photograph - impressive photos @Denis Richard, am curious to know how you set up lighting to capture such beautiful gradients. Here's my most recent coin - a great portrait of Mithridates VI of Pontus one of Rome's greatest enemies in the 1st century BC. 2 auction photos and my photo is the third.




with AI these days you can make any image you want (although selling coins this way doesn't seem all that ethical to me)

 

That's my own Dynamic Axial Lighting. I've discussed it at length in previous posts here. I'll look for a link.

 

Speaking of comparing auction photos, and this is a little, or a lot, off-topic, but I had a unique opportunity last week. I was given a Pixodaros silver didrachm, minted in Halikarnassos, to photograph. My customer has sent me 5 sets of dealer and auction-house photos from previous sales of the same coin, which were part of his research. I have combined them all into one image below, including mine. Granted, three of them were shot with the coin encapsulated (NGC), but the other three were shot raw. I was surprised by the range in colour and contrast.




My image is below.



The customer wrote, " I’m pleased with the [images of the] Pixodaros stater – a combination of residue and not-great [dealer] photography kept that item affordable."

 

AI can do amazing things behind coin photos, and you don't have to alter the coin. Everything below was done by using AI to generate backgrounds for product photos. These are promotional, of course, but represent the products faithfully and save me so much time. (more of what I do every day)