Hey guys, I just came back from the Greater Atlanta Coin Show, and I picked up a PCGS MS64 1883 O Morgan with some amazing dark rainbow colors and textile toning, but I'm having a really hard time taking pictures of it. Thanks for any tips on taking pictures of dark coins! I photographed a coin with slightly similar toning to show you how dark this coin is with a phone. The first picture is of the coin I do not have trouble with, and it is just a reference. Both coins were taken with the lights at 12 o'clock and 3 o'clock. This picture is my setup. I use two IKEA lights with bright white lights (I can't remember the specs and brightness) about 2 feet above the table. For the background, I use a clean white sheet of paper. For a stand, I use a $25 penny box, which is just the right height to not get in the way too much and still get good detail of the coins. My camera is just a simple iPhone 6. And here is the coin I'm having trouble with. The reverse is really bright and has a nice soft edge of yellow toning, which makes it pop out more. The reverse is easy to capture correctly, but the obverse seems to be fully covered by a layer of yellow toning, which really darkens the obverse. The whole left side is covered with an amazing neon green, pink, and yellow color, but as you can see, I can't get all the color in. If you look at the denticles from the third star right of the date all the way up to the E, they have neon outlines because the color goes all the way around. The area of the date is bright green similar to the color captured and all the devices have beautiful outlines of slightly different colors based on the amount of time they have been toning. Also, it has some nice textile toning from her cheek up to "LIBERTY", to the right of the date, and at the top in "BUS" of "PLURIBUS", and I want to capture that as much as possible And finally here are the two coins next to each other with the two lights at the same height above them and centered to be right above the label. None of these pictures have been tweaked, and they are just the best I could get raw.
I don't know about other folks but I can't make axial lighting work on slabbed coins due to reflection off the plastic. I think that on a dark toned coin like this one, a third light source would be helpful to bounce more light off the silver surface back through the toning.
These 3 examples were shot, in their slabs, with indirect axial lighting. Then cleaned up in Photoshop.
I really like your new 1883-O, @toned_morgan ! That’s a nice strike for that date. I keep things simple and just do lights at 10 and 2, but I play with the heights a lot as it drastically effects the resulting images. These are all slabbed Morgans at 10 and 2:
Not too much different from yours with the cones, not sure on the specs. Large bright spiral fluorescent bulbs.
There’s several slab shots in this thread that show my standard positioning, though I took this particular set fast and with some more time I know I could get better representation of the luster. Usually I shoot for 10 and 2 and the light reflection just off the rim of the coin on both sides with the coin itself fully illuminated. https://www.cointalk.com/threads/inherited-morgans-back-from-pcgs.305229/
Thanks so much! I just took pictures about one hour ago using all your help, and they look amazing! Thank you!
And I also did another one that was hard to take, and that one came out perfectly. Thanks for all your help! Asta la vista, amigos!
