Yes I agree.. I am not a fan of viewing a coin in someone’s hand.. but it is a quick and easy way to move the coin and catch the light correctly - which my photography skills cannot achieve. Perhaps using the super black and the coin raised on a dowel, them moving the camera (In video mode) around the coin from different angles may give a more pleasing result? I will play around with it in the weekend... who knows?
I tried it with my camera on a tripod rather than in my shaky hands, and put the coin on just a small piece of black foam cushion to keep it from sliding around, but I still needed my shaky hands to tilt the foam. I'm sure someone will come up with a fix for that, but at least it made for a plain black background and kept the focus from jumping in and out:
This shows movement in 2D but we lack the tilting that changes the lighting /glare angle. Perhaps if the coin were sitting in a half of a rubber ball that allowed tilt as well as shift????
Yes that is fine.. but for me it is just a video version of my bad photography (not yours.. mine). We need to move the coin (or camera?) in a way to catch the light and really show what we are seeing in hand. I like Doug's ball idea for sure.. I will play around with it.. but will probably need a good technical photographer to figure it out. That isn't me.
My coin is probably the wrong one to be trying this with, as it's really very dark in hand. I did tilt it a little in the video because I wanted that light shift you're talking about, but I was trying hard to keep it at the same focal plane at the same time, too...all just kind of experimenting with video, I guess, because I can't take a picture of it to save my life. Eventually, when someone hammers out a set up for doing this, a ball seems like it will definitely have to play a part for swiveling the coin around to get light washing across the face of it. Somebody here is going to come up with something cool for doing videos!
What about moving the light? Keep the center of attention (the coin) motionless and so you can see how the light hits and plays off it?
I was playing around a little with this today.. and didn't get too far. However it brought up some questions that Yes I have been playing with this a bit today... nothing very successful but it does bring up questions: What should move? the coin, the light or the camera?