I want to take a picture of every coin & banknote in my collection to keep a documented inventory of what I have in case of theft, fire, etc,.. But I also want high quality photos for sharing and my bedroom light is just not cutting it. What kind of light do you recommend for taking photos of coins? If possible could you provide a link to it? Thanks!
I hope so. I’ve read on other forums that people recommend multiple light sources and I plan on doing that but I don’t know what lights to get in the first place.
For me LED's seem to give the fullest spectrum of lighting. They sell under names like Daylight and Naturalight type of names. Mine is a hobby light with a magnifier glass in the middle of a ring of LED's by Intertek. Photos taken with same light source of same coin with different background. Cell phone for camera
What about something like this? It has 2 LED lights on flexible arms that can be set in any position with a controller to take pictures.
First, what sort of camera do you have? Since you "want high quality photos" you'll need a camera that will give you those results. Second, I strongly suggest you get Numismatic Photography/2nd Edition by Mark Goodman. Among other things the book covers lighting. Lamps that mimic sunlight are recommended. In my case I use OTT-LITE's with their "white light" bulbs
Whatever you do, don't get light bulbs that cast a yellowish light. I once purchased some and had to edit each and every photo to change the lighting tint to make it whiter.
I know the photographers are going to have all kinds of gadgets for lighting. My personal opinion, a Dimmable LED desk lamp that is positionable with a swing arm. 6000K color in my opinion. if you go lower it will be more yellow, if you go higher it will be more blue. I think the Kelvin or color of light, is the most important factor when choosing LEDs. And I'd personally go for 1100 lumens max output which is about an 80 watt equivalent to incandescent as far as the amount of light. Since it's dimmable you can always tome it down. if you want you can even go to 1600 lumens and tone down from there. I'd use this type of light for photos and for grading really since incandescent isn't an option anymore. A nicely broken in 100 watt clear incadescent bulb is really hard to beat besides a new 75 watt clear, but they do run hot and they do burn out, and they ain't cheap anymore if you can still find them. I'll say most people hate one type of bulb or another, but MOST of that has to do with the Kelvin or color of the light, or the CRI (color rendering index) of the early days which has improved vastly in Halogen or LED since 20 years+ ago. Avoid any light that doesn't make the information available, Lumen, Kelvin or "K", and hopefully the CRI. 80-90 CRI is acceptable and good, 90+ is really good color rendering to the true color of objects. I don't know about this one personally I'm still on the fence about it, but I've had my eye on it. I don't like the bar format of it, it's going to be hard to filter if I wanted to filter the light, but what I do like is it has a manual adjust of brightness and color temp with a decent CRI. Another negative is it's a little low on Lumens, comes in at about 880L, that's like 60 Watt incandescent bulb. One more negative it stops at 6000K so it doesn't get into the blue spectrum of light which you might want for some reason along the way. https://www.amazon.com/HaFundy-Adjustable-Eye-Caring-Brightness-Function/dp/B08KY2KVWW/ref=sr_1_18?dchild=1&keywords=Lumens+Lamp&qid=1626183579&refinements=p_n_feature_two_browse-bin:5571382011,p_n_feature_browse-bin:5676449011&rnid=5699945011&s=lamps-light&sr=1-18 However this might perform really well in a shadowbox/photobox..... IF this one functions, without strobing, or flashing or any of the annoyances some dimmable LEDs have and the swing arm stays where you put it.... Still on the fence on it, but it's cheap. LOL
I just have been using my IPhone XS camera. But I used to have a Canon Rebel T1i and it didn’t really do much better even with a macro lens.
I bought two of these in 2019. Strong clip, long flexible neck, and three color intensities, the amber one is great for copper and bronze coins the others for silver colored. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016YIMYPU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Well, just remember with digital photos that you can experiment 'til the cows come home ('til you get what you want), so be patient and make notes.
First, I would not use any cellphone camera if you want "high quality" photos. None of them pick up all the detail needed for coin photography. I have used my cellphone camera lately just as an experiment (and it is a very high-quality one), and the results are not nearly as good as a DSLR or even a "pocket" digital camera. I am going back to a good DSLR with a macro lens. Lighting? Wow, there are so many choices out there. I got very good results with regular old desk lamps with soft white incandescent bulbs. But with the advent and great improvement of LEDs, that might be the way to go. I am going to try Ott-Lites (a pair of them) with white bulbs as previously suggested by @kanga. Trial and error is one way to go. I did that in the beginning and had varying results. I would also strongly suggest getting a piece of "grey card" from a camera store and photographing the coins on that card. That makes it a one-click solution to getting accurate color in post-processing with programs like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, etc.
