I'm still fussing with my lighting. Before I get heavy into imaging, formatting and final editing, is this overexposed? BTW, it truly does say "IN COD WE TRUST". Just the very slightest bump (under 9x magnification) to indicate it was supposed to be a "G". Minor die fill I suspect.
hmmm I'm not a huge fan of cod, or any fish for that matter. Except tuna. But looks like a great pic to me!
Your exposure looks reasonably good. But you have some hot spots all along the front of Liberty's face and some other places. You should be able to fix that by moving the light.
Nice pic: Hi kanga: Good pic: What is your setup (Camera settings, type and postion and number of lights, etc) that you are using?
Either 1 or 2 things you might consider. #1. Place some soft diffision material between the light and the subject like fire the flash through a white T-Shirt or hankie. #2. Use a Neutrial Density Filter and reduce the EV value of your exposure by 1/3, 2/3 and then 1 EV. #3. Turn the light away from the coin and use a piece of white poster board to reflect the light back on the coin! Good luck... RickieB
For lighting I use two 13 watt Ott-Lite desk lamps. I keep tweaking the distances and directions. I'm currently use diffusers on both lamps. Well, I call them diffusers. They are frosted plastic half gallon milk cartons. The camera is simple. It's a Coolpx 995. Other than using the macro setting and the highest resolution, the camera takes care of the rest. But here's what it can do if I stay away from the shiny coins:
I'll go with Hobo, just a cpl hot spots. We can't all be a Brandon Kelly, but we can try. Practice makes perfect.
The hot spots are your biggest issue. You might not need the diffusion all that much, either, there's a shortage of good contrast. Try just the two lights and tweaking the positioning/angle to get rid of the hot spots.
Looks pretty good but just a couple hot spots of light. If you ever decide to upgrade your camera, get one that can shoot in sRAW or RAW picture format. With proper time, and trial & error with the RAW conversion software in Photoshop you can get rid of the hot spots (over-exposure) with just a little tweaking of the RAW file. But there are some over-exposure/under-exposure instances that software can't fix that moving and diffusing of light CAN fix as others have said, so be aware of that. The original picture might have been saved if it was shot in RAW format, IMHO. I've been shooting in RAW format with a Canon 20D DSLR for 3 years now, for both professionally paid and for everyday family things.
It is a touch overexposed, but candidly, the photo is wonderful. I think you will find that highly lustrous coins that have high relief will always present a challenge in photographing. The problem is that there's too much dynamic range for digital camreas. Either you'll underexpose/lose detail the darks or overexpose the lights. In this case it looks like you've done the latter (below the eye is the most obvious area of blown highlights) but the photos still makes visual "sense". Bravo! Well done! One of the better photos I've seen on here. Dial back about 1/3 to 1/2 stop, and it will be just about perfect!
