Remember my 41-D Toned Roll? How about a 40-D?

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Hot dang, those are gorgeous.

 

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Beautiful group shot Ray! That is how BN cents should look,,

 

Yes black on the very edges. I like your response that they are Gov't rounds and not rally collectible coins. Can I buy the dip from a coin shop?
Thanks again. Wow! your penny is spectacular!

 

Thanks!

You can buy dipping solution from any coin shop. Tell the owner what you plan to do and he can give you detailed instructions.

 

Will do thanks again.

 

I was fortunate enough to buy coin #4 from this roll. In hand, the coin is a lot brighter (a lot more red than I expected), and the rainbow colors are a lot more subtle. This is a gorgeous coin, but the colors are not nearly as vivid as the 41D roll a few years ago.

I'm not nearly as good of a photographer as Ray, but I wanted to show my first attempts at photographing my coin. The truth of the coin in hand is somewhere in between my pictures and Rays stellar shots.

 

I've got #3 and #11 that I photographed yesterday evening. I ran out of time but I'll try and get them posted this evening.

 

Looks pretty good to me. I think the difference between your shots and mine is in the angle of the lights. You were able to keep the coin in the 2x2 for the shot, but if I did that I'd get lots of glare. That extra high angle brings out more of the toning colors.

 

I picked up the #1 coin from the roll. My photo is a bit darker than Ray's photo. Like Jason said, the coin is probably somewhere in between Ray's photo and mine.

 

Well, I've always had a pet peeve about the "in-hand look". Truthfully, the coins look exactly like my photos. But they also look exactly like Robec's, and like Physics-fan3.14's. Cameras don't lie, and knowing the coins I don't see where either Robec or Physics-fan3.14 have juiced the coins. The difference is in the way the coins are lit. I can light a coin a hundred different ways, and it will look a little different for each. But that's what the coin looks like! When I view a coin in-hand, I usually use a single light, either a LED or halogen, at a good distance above the coin. If I hold the coin such that the light reflects directly off of it, it exhibits the deep colors like I show in my shots, and Robec is showing in his. But that "look" doesn't photograph well, so coin photographers add more lights, diffuse them, move them to different angles, etc in order to even-out the light so you can actually see all the details. So if the in-hand look is what I view when I'm using a single light high above the coin, then none of these shots looks remotely like that, and everyone should be very glad they don't!

 

Very true points, Ray. I wasn't knocking your photos at all - they are extremely good. I was more comparing what the coin looks like under my lights compared to what they look like under your setup.

I think that's one of the things that people don't understand or don't think about when they talk about "in-hand" views: if you have different lights at different angles, the exact same coin can look very, very different.

 

No worries, I just get miffed when folks talk about "in-hand" look. I usually end up writing just about what I wrote above each time. I was not taking either your or Robec's posts as criticism, just venting on a pet peeve.

Now, bottom line, I like both your and Robec's photos a lot, and they show the coins well. I do think the more "axial" lighting brings out more color, but also makes the coin look darker...there are so many tradeoffs!

 

Here's my images of coin #3. I'm sitting here looking at it in my hand and it definitely has more color than my lens saw. Lighting will make you and it will definitely break you......

 

Very nice! Lighter than my images but not showing the color as much. Shooting these to get color is like shooting a deep-toned proof...the color is there when you do the single-light in-hand viewing, but it's hard to capture.

 

BTW for everyone's info, I shot the coins with a 1-degree tilt, which makes getting the color much easier. I use a calibrated goniometer stage along with a tilt adapter for the camera to compensate for the coin tilt so depth of field remains constant.

 

What lighting are you using?

 

Long ago I invented the "smile director", which is essentially two short sections of ringlight. I initially created these using Jansjo LED lamps, with all but a curved slit masked-off. I also invented a technique for calibrating the lighting using a mirror at the plane of the coin. See this post from 2012 describing the technique:

https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=108348

Since then I have created a couple new ways to achieve the same results:

1) using diffuser at the lens. By masking off parts of the diffuser, you can create whatever shape you want to the lighting, so it's easy to mimic the smile directors.

2) using an actual ringlight, but masking-off the unwanted parts.

For the 40-D toned roll, I used technique #2 above. The ringlight is a 40mm diameter "Angel Eyes" COB LED ringlight for 12V automobile use. They are meant to be used around smaller lights to create a halo effect. The work wonderfully for coin lighting. I mask off the parts I don't want to shine and can thereby create a pair of "smile directors" of any arc-length that don't require much calibration.

 

I've been meaning to pick up an angle eye after that thread on CCF on how to shoot proofs. I guess I need to quit procrastinating...