Titus Sestertius Photo Comparison

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by Aethelred, Apr 4, 2019.

  1. Aethelred

    Aethelred The Old Dead King

    This first photo was taken using a Tamron 18-135mm zoom lens and a 13mm macro extension tube. My camera was set to AV mode f11 with an ISO of 400. My concerns were the color appearing more brown (to my eye) than the actual coin, I set my white balance to incandescent. The photo is also too soft, I believe the lens/tube combo are capable of a sharper image, but I used auto focus.



    [​IMG]

    In the following photo I used my new Canon EF 100mm 1:2.8L IS USM Macro lens. Once again the camera was set to AV mode at f11, but I reduced mt ISO to 100 and changed my white balance to automatic. I also manually focused to take better advantage of the sharpness of this lens.


    [​IMG]

    Please share your honest opinions and advice.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2019
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  3. Aethelred

    Aethelred The Old Dead King

    Ok, the new photo is showing on my website, but not here let me try to fix this....


    ...That seems to have worked.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2019
  4. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    I recommend use of manual white balance. To calibrate it, you shoot a white card and teach the camera that definition of white. On my Canon 5DmkII, this is done in two steps. You select manual and the tell the camera which frame is the definition of white.

    Zoom lenses are usually better if they have a limited zoom range and especially one that does not cross from wide to telephoto. An 18-135 is likely to have problems that a 70-200 won't have but a prime lens like the 100 is likely better yet. I doubt most people will see the difference between the best zooms and primes. For one thing, companies are putting a lot more resources into designing better zooms while prime lenses are older designs. Also, lens sharpness is becoming less a feature as postprocessing programs are made to correct for certain lens aberrations.

    Cameras come with a 'kit' lens, often 18-55 which are not the usually the best lenses. 18-135 adds greatly to convenience and range but better quality would be easier to achieve using two or more separate lenses.
     
    Aethelred and R*L like this.
  5. Aethelred

    Aethelred The Old Dead King

    For good measure here is a shot of a silver coin:

    [​IMG]
     
  6. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    Good shot of Otho. The light is right for a right facing portrait while the leftie sestertius is lit on the back of the head which I regularly point out as not to my personal taste. I know a lot of you like it judging from posted photos bu I prefer light coming from above slightly favoring the side of the head with features.
     
  7. Aethelred

    Aethelred The Old Dead King

    @dougsmit I am definitely a work in progress as a coin photographer, but I feel like I am going in the right direction. I am still working on getting the lighting down, but I have come to suspect that the type of lighting is far less important than it's location relative to the coin and camera.
     
  8. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    Agree except I do prefer lights with high CRI ratings and lights that do not run at very hot temperatures. I still get better results with CFL than I do with LED for reasons I do not understand but I believe it has something to do with the size of the bulbs and how I am arranging them differently.
     
  9. Hookman

    Hookman Well-Known Member

    BTW, to answer the first above question, I like the 2nd set best.
     
    Clavdivs likes this.
  10. Terence Cheesman

    Terence Cheesman Well-Known Member

    Coins with "camo" pattern patinas are often very difficult to photograph. From what i can see the second photo looks better at least on my monitor.
     
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