Alexander Tet--practicing coin photography

I'm practicing with a digital camera. Too bad I don't have a micro lens...however, the more I take, the better the pics!

I got this coin a few years back.


http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y127/wolves1969/GreekAlexander.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y127/wolves1969/GreekAlexRev.jpg

 

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looks good..photo AND coin

 

Very good photos! I like them.

 

Hi Wolves69:
Do you have any image processing software? The raw pics have everything you need, but the background paper is showing letters through from the other side, and the images are a bit dark and gloomy looking. Here are the same pics after I ran Corel Photopaint and increased both brightness and contrast. Sometimes I also play with the color balance to make silver coins stand out better, but in this case it did not seem necessary... just brightness and contrast did the trick. I also put some compression on the files so that they are less than half the size, yet with little loss of clarity.

I find that digital pictures of coins are seldom useable right out of the camera... they usually need a little something. I use Photopaint because that's what I learned on years ago, but Adobe Photoshop is also very popular and extremely powerful, as are many other software packages used for this purpose.

Be well! Tom

 

Thanks Tom,

All I have on my computer is M$ PhotoEditor, M$Picture It, and Ulead PhotoExplorer 8.0. Not the best programs in the world. I do see what you mean my the contrast and brightness. I'll have to play with what I got. I may have an old copy of Photoshop laying around (5.0). I'll have to resurect that.

Now, how do you crop the coin in a circle? I looked in programs I'm using, and there are no such tools.

Thanks for the help...

Tom

 

Looking good, looking good

Take Care
Ben

 

My New Year's resolution is to get a better camera so I can get nice clear close-ups like that.Good job.

 

you can use the lasso tool in PS or the circular marque tool...cut and past them into a new background or adjust the background of one to fit both sides (you will need to cut and paste them to get both rev and obv on the same page side by side)...maybe use your eraser tool or lasso tool to get the bits you missed if the coin is off circle.

I just keep a black background I always use in waiting...I do all my adjustments to both sides first...then I cut both sides and paste them into my new background and shrink them to fit the size of my background (roughly 600 px wide 300 px tall) as I take them very high quality in macro in case I want to cut details. Make sure they are the same size...then I save out for web.

 

I find that it depends on the camera, and not meaning a big dollar camera. I use a mid range 3megapix Nikon, and get some really clear pics, especially at hi-res.

Fred

 

I think its a matter of whether you take the time to set your camera (or if you camera has advanced settings) or you instead use a program to fix what you didnt set on your camera...since I spent quite some time setting my camera to my specific set-up, I often dont need to do a whole lot of fixes in photoshop (maybe just a quick tweek here and there). On the whole I get what I want right from the camera because I took the time to do a lot of trial and error shots with my set-up.

 

Original images are out of focus. No amount of post-processing will correctly amend that.

 

Here's an example of what I mean. With a good macro setting, you can good close ups. This is a section of a 1942 dd that I found. I was easier to check the date with hi-res photos

Fred