Over the past several years I've gained experience in imaging coins and creating the screen presentation. This is the general look I want, obverse and reverse side-by-side with the label included: I want the total image, background and all sized to fit approximate 3/4th of a screen set at 1024x768 resolution. In other words, uniformity of size. Now the question. Should each coin be presented at the relative size that it exists in the real world? In other words, a small cent should be shown about 2/3rds the size of a half dollar (real world sizes 19mm vs. 30.6mm)? The silver dollar would be my biggest, the silver 3-cent my smallest. The dollar would fill as much of the screen as reasonable and the silver 3-cent would be about 2.72 times smaller.
Kanga - nice pics. My opinion is to show the coin regardless of its relative size. After all, the coin is the focus and I would prefer the symmetry of all coins appearing the same size in photos.
A combination of image inventory and show-and-tell. And one correction to my original post. The silver 3-cent is NOT the smallest coin I have. The early (1849-1854) gold dollar is at 13 mm.
One problem I've encountered is that the more a coin is enlarged by a high resolution image, the uglier it gets. Details that you don't see in the real world start to become quite prominent. I'll try an example (dollar vs. silver 3-cent). I think it'll be much easier if you can see what I have in mind.
VERY TRUE and very frustrating since I think that a minor flaw distorts the true eye appeal in hand. I can relate Kanga!
I am not just sure who you are "show and tell"ing to, but to most, I would think that size is an important aspect of the coin. If you tack that onto the loss of clarity with higher enlargements, I would definitely proportion the pics to the coin size.
That is not necessarily true. Yes, if you take a small picture and enlarge it it does happen. But I think what kanga is talking about is starting out with a large picture of a small coin. Anyway, if I understand correctly kanga you are asking about the proportional size of the pictures being equal to the proportional actual size of the coins. In other words, a picture of a half dime would be much smaller than a picture of a dollar. Personally, I do not agree. I have alway preferred to, try at least, to make my coin pics all be the same size regardless of what the coin was. And I do have a reason for this. That being - when trying to judge the quality of or appreciate the detail and design of a coin you need to be able to see it. With large dollar size coins you can use proportionally small pics and still see the condition and details. With tiny coins you need to use proportionally larger pics. And bear in mind, when grading small coins even very tiny marks count as much as large marks on large coins. So if the pics are small, you can't see those tiny marks. So my opinion is that regardless of the coin, make the pics all the same size.
In forum posts, I don't think that relating image and coin size is necessary. However, when you are presenting coins as a set, or as a poster or printout, scaling the pictures makes the resulting images more "believeable".
