Numismatography

Numismatography, for a good look ; )

Great photos of a stunning example, yarm. You have many great coins and I have long admired your excellent photography. : )

Here are both sides of my Hall's Toucan, the Conder Token pictured in my original post above.

 

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Could you provide an executive summary description of how you took these two photos?

 

Lies

Lies, Darned lies, and statistics.....and photographs.....and now Photo~S~hifting software.

Let there be light!

Now if I only had some of those subjects to whirl the light around.

Great Thread and examples of innovation folks. Keep it coming:rolling::thumb:

 

Please give further explanation of "Ott-Lites". It would be very nice to have a sample photograph, description, or maybe some Web links describing Ott-Lites.

For "normal" coin photography, I have been using standard "Reveal" light bulbs and simple diffusers directing illumination onto the coin.

Sometimes, I shine my lights onto the white ceiling (and turn off all other lights) to get a very diffuse overhead illumination which eliminates any hot spots on the subject.

 

Basic desk lamp available cheap at Office Depot etc.

 

Outstanding indeed, sir !

Great photos, great coin, ugly dude... on the coin, that is.

He should marry the girl who modeled for the US Matron cents. A match made in heaven !

 

Equipment Counts

I feel compelled to reveal a little secret. Lighting is of paramount importance when photographing coins. Knowledge is also extremely important. But remember, I don't care how much you know and how good your lighting is, at some point, you might reach the limit of your equipment's capabilities. Here are some photos I took with a my Canon 880 point and shoot followed by my Nikon D90 DSLR & Sigma 105mm lens.

1902 Indian Head Cent NGC MS66 RB






1941 Jefferson Nickel NGC MS67 *





So remember boys and girls, equipment counts.

 

It's possible to position proof coins to "black out" the fields (see Blu62vette's images) and highlight the devices. The 1806 penny is a 66BN cameo so this effect is pretty strong. Then tilt the coin to light up the the color in the fields. Use light bounced off a white ceiling so as not to wash out the color. This is the same effect as in Larry Moran's second saddlery token image. The camera had a macro lens set back in a black barrel and a polarized intervening lens to eliminate glare (the coin was encapsulated).

A fair amount of experimentation is often required to produce such effects. :goofer:

 

Equipment does count Paul I have to agree, but at what point is it "user error"?


This photo was taken with one light source, a 10w flourecent bulb with a 8mega pixal point and shoot.

Note: this is only a $1 coin.

 

http://www.ottlite.com/


:smile

 

Some GREAT ideas here, especially regarding diffusing and limiting light.

I have found that certain coins/medals seem to want to be photographed, while others resist the process. NEVER take it personally and NEVER give up.

This medal turned out pretty good.....

 

Wow, we're rolling now. Lehigh's photos of the Indian and the Jeff nickel illustrate well the improvements possible by stepping up a bit with equipment. The Indian photos are very nice, the Jeff photos are very excellent. : )

It's fun to read these posts and they bring back memories of many of the variations in lighting, diffusion and sometimes frustration that we experience along the way as numismatographers. Numismatography goes far beyond listing photos, but we will have many more folks observe and share our collections through our sharing of images.

hiho, this last pic is superb and the coin photogenic. I really like the clock on the tower. : )

My thanks to all who have contributed already. : )

 

This is a fantastic thread and I plan to follow it religiously...kudos to Larry for sharing his years of experience, and thanks to all the other contributors as well!
:hug:

 

Thanks, Moonshadow. Glad to see your comments, as usual. This could be a helpful thread to many. : )

Here's a nice Feuchtwanger One Cent Token, photographed in its NGC slab.

 

i bought 2 of these OTT LITE's at office depot the other day but i am not having much luck getting good pictures. i have tried a few different processes with these lights with no luck. :headbang::headbang: should i return them and try different ones?? or can someone suggest a good way to set them up. i will mostly be shooting coins in slabs.

 

I like it great coin!!:thumb:

 

Ensure your White Balance is correct. Then you just have to move the lights around to properly illuminate the coin. Takes alot of practice.

 

To urbanchemist...

I believe the best results can be obtained by placing your two Ott-Lites so that when the lamps are horizontal and beside the coin at both sides, and the camera is pointing straight down, and there is glare on the sides of the slabs but not on the coin portion, they will nicely illuminate the coin.

From there, I would circle crop the coins and place them on another background (black, white, or any color of your choice) to eliminate the portion with the glare. If lamps are placed further to the sides, you may not have any glare at all.

Then, experimentation with shutter speed should finally produce proper exposures. In the beginning, I'd suggest taking a lot of photos and select the best of each side. Later, with a bit more experience, it will take a lot fewer shots, because you will have some successful results to base your setup and camera settings on.

NOTE: It is quite common for two sides of a coin to require a couple of stops difference to get proper exposures on both sides, and the lightness or darkness of a particular coin may dictate a few stops difference, too. : )

If you get excited about numismatography, you might try reading Mark Goodman's book, Numismatic Photography. Mark describes many types of lighting and angles, and explains the difference in high, medium and low contrast coins. He also shows a variety of setups which he uses to effect the fine results he obtains, which are about as good as some of the better examples you've seen on this thread.

Although I recently bought a copy for myself, it remains unopened since my experience has taught me a lot. I did read his book fully shortly after it was published, after borrowing it free from the ANA Library. The main thing that you will learn is that there will not be one best setup that will apply to all coins.

At coin shows, I have heard recently that professionals are often taking many photos of each coin before obtaining results that satisfy them, because they have to be sure they will have taken some dandies. ; )

I use Photoshop to compose the images with two faces of a coin next to each other, or obverse and reverse in separate images, which allows me to store much larger images on PhotoBucket.

Now, with about six years of experience at numismatography, I don't need to take so many exposures, because I know when previewing the images on the camera's monitor when I have a nice set to work with. If all of this was easy, we wouldn't need this thread. Most professionals will not share all of their information with you. I base much of my photographic knowledge on past professional experience gained primarily from photographing sail racing yachts in the 1970's and 80's, with film cameras; Nikons and Pentax 6x7's.

You must use the macro feature available on most point-and-shoots, or a macro or micro lens on a DSLR to be able to produce sharp focus close to a coin. I always use Manual mode, since Automatic exposures usually produces poor results. The same is true of Automatic White Balance; I do a White Balance Preset which adjusts white balance to compensate for a variety of types of lighting.

ebay sellers who show good photos have gone obtained similar experience before producing great results, and if you see a seller's images which are poor, realize that they have not yet invested in the time necessary to refine their techniques. I have seen folks on ebay try for years and never produce satisfactory results. It does take a knack for photography and a desire to approach perfection. : )

Almost any kind of lighting can ultimately produce good results, but excellence is another matter. Mark Goodman uses one or two Ott-Lites on occasion, though he has used many types of lighting, and some very sophisticated techniques and equipment. I produce all of my results on the leaf of my desk, most generally with my DSLR on a good tripod and pointing straight down at the coin. ; )

I use a bubble level from Home Depot which insures that I can get coin and camera square. First I leveled my desk so that the leaf was level. But I still need to place the bubble level on the back of the camera every time I set up. Then I can level the camera with tripod ball or legs and other adjustments. Without such control, it is difficult to get a coin in sharp focus over its entirety.

I would recommend (at first) to have the coin occupy barely more than half the height of the frame in landscape/horizontal orientation. Once you are obtaining good results there, then you can move the camera closer. But get too close and the limited depth-of-field of macro features or lenses will prevent getting the entire coin in sharp focus. 'Normal' lenses, used for taking family photos, and even closeups, will not produce good images of coins.

BTW, if you want to document your collection or a group of coins, you might consider having prints made by snapfish for 9¢ each. Set up single or side-by-side images in a 4x6 aspect ratio in any size and they will resize them with their enlarger to fit the photo paper. Also, you can upload photos of any size to PhotoBucket and their software will automatically resize them if either side exceeds 1024 pixels, but it may take awhile for them to resize before the upload process is completed. Photos will be compressed by PB's software, but that compression will not detract seriously from the image as viewed on your computer, straight from the camera.

Always use the camera's highest resolution and resize your images to 1024 pixels maximum on the longest side before uploading them to PhotoBucket or other webhosting service. Images of 800 x 800 are pretty large and may fit your needs and display with adequate detail on websites.

On Flickr, I can display my images without resizing, so often my side-by-side images are 5000 pixels wide, sometimes more, but such images often approach Flickr's 20MB limit. I sometimes just upload a 1024 pixel image.

These notes should help you to reduce the amount of time necessary to produce satisfying results. I am retired and have no professional goals. I just like to take good photos and share them on the internet, and my images also print beautifully. I like to share my knowledge with others, since I don't like to look at poor images. A poor image is a 'photo,' but a great coin image is a numismatograph, imho.

 

Thanks for sharing your experiences with us Larry.
That last post was loaded with great information :hail:

 

Larry thanks so much for the valuable info. i will have to give your suggestions a try. i do actually have the "Numismatic Photography" book. i have only briefly skimmed through it.