No new coins worth shooting

Not being willing or able to continue adding coins to my collection has provided me with free time to play with my associated hobby, Coin Photography. Latest have been some trials and many failures in super macro showing parts of coins. The hardest part is finding a coin that would benefit from being examined this close. That does not mean that I need mint state beauties (I won't be outbidding you for those) but to find details that show something 'interesting' or even 'educational'. This post will show two plated coins. The hope here is to provide an image in 2048 pixels (Facebook limit) that says something worth saying.

First is a fourree Athenian tetradrachm looking down into the valley of its testcut.
It was fun to do but really has no value over the photo of the whole coin. Click to enlarge:


The last two show both sides of a fourree Augustus denarius. The obverse of this coin has a classic example of the seam in the silver wrap that condemns the coin as plated.


The reverse confirms this with plating breaks showing copper under the silver. It is important to remember that copper on a plated coin is under the silver. We see some solid silver or billon coins incorrectly called fourree because they have copper deposits on top of the silver rather than under it.


Suggestions for other subjects that would lend themselves to this 'revealing' closer look would be appreciated.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I like zooming really deep into colorful patinas to realize how and where different minerals deposited to make the colors


And into others to appreciate the artistry of the dies

 

I find both of the photo sets above very interesting and helpful.

 

Times must be hard when an accomplished photographer and collector asks for suggestions for close-up coin photography.
If I had a macro set-up I'd try two things. Chances are you've already tried them, but I'll suggest them anyway.

Flow lines, especially in and around legends. That could give some fascinating pics.
And: capture details of the slightly recessed parts around elevated parts (bust or portrait) of a coin, caused by the silver being 'sucked' by the strike into the elevated section. They often look like an ever so thin, recessed shadow tracing the elevated part. (If there is a numismatic term for it, I don't know it. I hope you get what I mean).

And those are some great pics. Thanks for showing. The colors of the Athenian tet are captivating. Is the ribbed pattern at the bottom of the test-cut the imprint of the chisel used?

 

...me with Dougs coins he wouldn't shoot...

 

Considering all of the test-cutting that was apparently going on back then, it's cool to see an example where the effort was actually worthwhile. I wonder what happened to the guy that was trying to pass that coin off as legit!

Also makes me wonder if any counterfeiters had the foresight to smack a test cut into their fakes before plating them. Evidence of a previous test might have went a step farther in fooling people.

 

The resolution is impressive - are these taken with your microscope?
I like the test cut photo as art - and the seam of the foil wrapped fourre is educational.

Rephotographing a coin can sometimes be as entertaining as photographing a new one. This coin caught my attention for the odd edges on the flan - perhaps a serratus restruck or just coincidence of a ragged flan? Editing experiments in "reflections" & "ripple effects"...

 

Here are some macro photography ideas that come to mind:

• Flan characteristics or features that provide evidence of how they were made (center divots, file marks, flow lines, etc.
• Countermarks
• Graffito
• Patinas, bronze disease, other surface features
• Extreme closeups that could provide some fun in the form of a guessing game, i.e. "can you identify this coin by looking at this crop?"

 

I like colorful minerals. Some real close ups of minerals like this would be cool. Here there is blue azurite, brown cuprite, and green malachite all co existing

I think it’s neat how much more prevalent the malachite is than the other two copper compounds

 

Those are excellent ideas. Thanks. I thought the ribbed pattern was very interesting and believe it is exactly what you say. Perhaps the chisel had a blunt end ribbed pattern to reveal the core without cutting the coin in half or slipping off???

That is what I believe is happening with these two. They are casts in bronze with silver added after the cut. Fakes are interesting but it is next to impossible ever to answer the questions they bring up --- especially 'why???'. Did they really think this would fool people? Of course it was probably easier then as now to fool a fool and the world is, was and will be full of fools.

Excellent ideas each and every one. I have shot some of those in the past. My favorite photo game is 'Whatzit?' I'll show you a photo and you tell me what it is. I am a big fan of countermarks. To me, the best part of this bull is the remnants of the dotted border that made the line from snout to tail.

I have shot some of these with several different rigs including a microscope but this started with my desire to use the focus bracketing feature of my camera which automates focus stacks but only with autofocus lenses. My best ones so far including both the owl and Augustus used a Canon 16-35mm zoom reversed using a Meike auto reversal adapter. The owl added additional extension tubes but the Augustus did not.


I had forgotten about minerals. Perhaps you will recall my Chinese giraffe? I have posted him here before.


Thanks for all the ideas. Now I have to sort out coins to try!

 

I’ve been wanting to start a macro thread for awhile on ancient footwear (and other apparel). I think shooting various sandals, boots and shoes would be super cool, showing real examples or artistic recreations alongside. I haven’t had the time but it would be a fun subject.

 

Like some others in this thread, I like the coin macros as art as much as for any educational value about the coins themselves. In fact, I have a coin macro as my computer wallpaper.

Recently @Kaleun96 posted a link to his ultrazoomed photos and they are absolutely captivating, especially on this new Macbook Pro 16" (a big splurge but my old one was 9 years old).

At the moment the wallpaper is a highly zoomed portion of a tet of a Ptolemy I with the deified head of Alexander in an elephant skin headdress. Very landscape-ish and abstract. The difficulty was choosing which portion to use-- pretty much any highly zoomed segment looks like beautiful art!



@Doug-- that first photo in this thread will also make good wallpaper. I've already saved it .

 

Some beautiful macro photos shown here !
My main use for macro photography is in the evaluation of tiny texts in arab script on oriental coins. For many of these definite readings in the references are still incomplete or sometimes plainly wrong.
An example is this Ghaznavid bull and horseman Jital below. The coin is 17 mm over the longest axis. The text on the side of the bull is tiny, but expertly executed.





Unfortunately, even with this photograph, still some doubts over its interpretation.

 

Fun and interesting thread, @dougsmit! This isn't "macro," per se, but I like showing close-ups of some of the (otherwise uninteresting) deities on the reverses of Roman Imperial coins when they appear to be doing something funny.

Pietas with a "I dunno" gesture:



Venus staring intently at a coin:



Pietas doing a little furry cosplay, wearing a lioness mask:

 

One more suggestion: I often hear about "luster" being used to confirm the legitimacy of a silver coin (or actually, to confirm that it's not a cast copy). I'd be interested in seeing a close-up of a worn denarius that still has traces of luster in the recessed areas.

 

Boots of Constantius II from Constantinople


and Magnentius from Rome


Both suffer from unnatural lighting caused by the lens being only an inch above the coin making it hard to get light in. This will require some more thinking.

 

On that last image. I would have thought that those "dots" looked like casting bubbles. Is there a way to distinguish them from the ones in your image? Also a second question. I have an interest in plated coins. I don't mind having them in my collection (assuming they were accordingly recognized and discounted at purchase). From your images can you say anything in general about how they were made, who might have done it or anything else you have learned just from your taking these stunning images? Thanks.

 

I haven't experimented with close ups with my macro and may well give it a try over the coming weeks. My standard setup gives me images that mean that I reduce them to 33% of their size for general use. I keep the full size images for my own reference.

The following is an example of my standard online reduced image with a full size cutout from the original just for comparison. Click on image to see them full size.

 

Imagine taking an English muffin and wrapping it in two circular pieces of aluminum foil. The seam is where the foils met. Many seams where erased by the striking force but some were incompletely merged so leakage could occur. Everything I know about fourrees came from Campbell. I recommend reading it and studying the photos. I bought the book years before they put it online free.
http://numismatics.org/digitallibrary/ark:/53695/nnan10308

 

There is a great possibility that cropping from an image taken farther back might be better than shooting too close to the coin. My latest attempt this morning uses a 55 year old Leitz Focotar enlarging lens. It allows being a bit farther away and making a bit larger enlargement. The fact remains that the detail on the coin limits sharpness and I do not have the lighting right yet. Being a photo hobbyist for so many years has resulted in an accumulation of old toys to investigate. After all, I am enjoying playing. If I were doing this for a living, it might be a waste of time. The larger image below shows a 4x6mm area on the coin or about 6x magnification. I have more extension available but this subject won't take that and show anything. I need to find a better coin.