What the heck, I’m taking new pictures so I’ll post some more. I have another 1955 proof for tomorrow. Also, thank you for the nice comments. They are appreciated.
I struggle with Lincoln proofs and know exactly what you mean. The fields tend to black out or they blaze too much and make the surfaces look horrible. I end up shooting 3x times the pictures compared to a business strike. You've done and EXCELLENT job with those gifs! My proof shots look like something from ebay. LOLOL
I did capture this one pretty well - it looks like this in hand at least....but you can see the compromise I had to make with my lighting. I use a white background and no post processing other than to resize.
You may have answered this already in previous posts so I apologize if you have but how do you make your pics look live. It looks like an iPhone live pic or maybe a different app? They are awesome!
I take a series of still photos and join them together. These animations are just GIF files, one of the oldest and most widely supported of web image types. They have their limitations but work surprisingly well in spite of them. There are a couple of threads and posts where the basics are covered. These may give you all the information you need, but if not, or if you have any questions, just let me know. The technique is presented, and other contributors help improve it, in Animation and Coin Photography A method where I moved the coin under the lights: Post your Lincolns! And a description of the latest refinements that I am using for these photos: Post your coin photography set-up For a long while, I moved the coin under the camera to get different lighting angles. The hard part about that is that each image needs to be aligned and positioned to match the others. Now I am keeping the coin in a fixed position under the camera and rotating the coin and camera together under the lighting. The coin does not have as much apparent motion as the first technique. This is a lot easier to work with and the overlay of the images is more exact. There is still some apparent perspective shift in the final animation because the light hits the contours of the coin at slightly different elevations as you move them. So the coin appears to move slightly because the bright highlights are shifting with regard to the rest of the image. This may make more complete sense after reading the original thread and the other two posts. The original thread is fairly short and the technique evolves a bit over the 4 pages of the thread.
Ron, thanks again for the info on how you photograph your wheats. The gifs really show the beauty of each coin.
Thanks so much for the explanation and the links! I’m gonna give it a shot. You’re pics are beautiful!
Awesome coin. I wish mine was as spot free as yours though. That one spot on the obverse is ehh,but the color is insane. Yours most definitely looks like it can upgrade depending on how they feel at PCGS that day.