I think this will be of interest to some of you. Here's a series from some of the big names in the business to compare photography styles. Ideally it would have been nice to have the very same coin but the next best thing was to take ones that were as close to another as possible. So, who's your fave and why?
What a great idea! Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I almost wish the names weren't next to them so I don't feel like I'm picking based on past preference (or maybe I just shouldn't have looked). But I gotta say that I like Kunkes, General Motors and CNG...Roma usually looks better to my very amateur eye. But the coloring looks off.
Without seeing the actual coins in hand, this is just a photo beauty contest. What's important to me is whether the photos accurately depict the coin, not whether the photo is pretty.
Wow, I have to say that I am honestly surprised. There is no clear preference with "likes" spread evenly. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. We're creatures of habits and once we get used to a certain look - whatever that happens to be - then we measure everything against that look. Kind of how people get very passionate about, for example, the soft white light of incandescent tungsten lighting versus the pure white of an LED bulb. There is no biological reason why we should be preferentially drawn to other and reject the other. We're just used to the one look and when we come into a room with the "wrong kind" we're initially very uncomfortable. Stick with the wrong kind long enough and your mind's eye resets and then your old favorite looks all wrong! To continue the experiment I've just taken another set of photos of another solidus. The exact same coin taken with the same camera and lights and everything but the results look very different from small variations in the lighting. According to the group that's answered so far I would expect there to be an emotional response to one over the other when, really, there is no right or wrong here. They all have identical amount of detail and the color is representative of the actual coin. The sentiment of wanting the most accurate representation of the real life coin is actually a misconception born from the mind's trickery of visual processing. But how can that be? They're clearly different! In a photograph color and shadows are set but when you pick up a coin to examine it you move it around and while you're doing that you're probably also changing the quality and incidence angle of the light source(s). This creates an infinite number of "frames" like the above that your mind compresses into a single average against which it compares. And that yardstick, of course, varies from person to person.
I have no business participating in this question because I have no experience with high end gold coins and their photography. I guarantee you that if I were to spend that kind of money on a coin, I'd probably opt for something more like that Regalianus or some Archaic Greek item you don't see everyday. However I do have opinions on photography. Of the seller photos I find the Roma one offensive due to the red hue but could live with most of the rest. Which is best depends on which of my computers I an using but I'll get to than further down after most people have stopped reading my drivel. Suarez said: These words sum up photography rather well in general but coin photography especially well. There are several different factors that contribute to a photo. The ones that come to mind this morning are brightness, contrast, hue and saturation. There are others (bit depth, light source CRI etc.). Each can vary separately for each color (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow) but have to play together to render such things as brown (the color that gives me the most trouble). When photographing something that glitters like mint state gold we really see the factor I call 'wiggle' but Suarez defined better with "you move it around and while you're doing that you're probably also changing the quality and incidence angle of the light source(s)". This explains why some of us really like those videos of coins in hand as discussed on a recent thread here when Harlan Berk published some examples. Those of us who like cameras don't like to admit that a movie sot from a cell phone has some advantages over our cameras but life is not always fair. Every coin photo is a record of light as it bounced off of an object. Some of this light is glare or noise which destroys detail but is necessary to show a degree of sparkle expected from a metal object. That means a perfect image has to include imperfections in balance with what would seem to be perfection. Confusing? It gets worse. Suarez correctly pointed out this "varies from person to person." That is an understatement. I read Coin Talk on two computers. One is a ten year old desktop with a monitor that is fading (none of us are what we were ten years ago and only a few of us are getting better). To illustrate this I downloaded his last (best?) image and tweaked it in Photoshop elements separately on each computer to produce what I, alone then and there, found most pleasing. Then I combined the two to show here. One will look better to each according to equipment and brain training. Some may see one of mine as an improvement on Suarez' original and some will not. Some may have breakfast and change their mind as to which is best according to their blood sugar spikes. Many won't see any difference (this attitude is important to sellers of cell phones and cheap cameras) since their opinion is based on the coin rather than the image. Laptop users need to be aware of the changes in an image caused by tilting the screen a little up or down. These cheap flatscreens do not perform well over a great angle of view so you can adjust poor images a bit in some cases with a little tilting. I note this is also true for smaller flatscreen TV's but most larger than about 40" get better in this regard, perhaps because they are expected to be used in small rooms with people viewing from less than ideal positions. You can buy better monitors to correct this but most people don't (and don't see any reason to care). I have so little experience in hand with ancient gold I had to drop back to a US coin my father gave me about sixty years ago. He had paid $5 for it an neglected to turn it in when Mr. Roosevelt so demanded. The three images vary by lighting. The left shows surface textures and faults. The center is mostly glare as reflected by this little mirror and hides those textures. The right image combines the other two in what I considered at that time and using that equipment to be a balance of the other two. I get so tired of people asking which looks like the coin in hand. They all do. It just depends on where that hand is located and the factor I call "wiggle". I rarely agree with Suarez on matters relating to the details of the hobby. On the above quoted passage, I see him as 100% spot-on. Coin collecting offers a number of optional side specialties appreciated only by some of us. There are coin cleaners, flyspeckers, slabbers (and slab crackers), historians, catalog number junkies, online forum operators, investors, bargain hunters, book collectors and, my personal favorite, photographers. I know my choices are different from yours. That is as it should be.
True, but another major influence is the monitor that one is using to view the photos. Every monitor messes with the color balance of the image to some extent, so many of these preferences are probably determined by the idiosyncrasies of the particular monitor.
I love #2 because it shows the quality of the fields. That is the one I would bid on. The ideal photo shows the coin looking like it does outside in the sun. Photographers will often alter the color so the image looks like the coin under their office lighting. On another thread I showed six professional pictures taken of the exact same gold coin showing a vast color range. https://www.cointalk.com/threads/photos-that-dont-look-like-the-coin.320528/#post-3146932
Well, I don't have a fish in this pond, but I'll agree with @panzerman. I've seen his stuff & he obviously has a great eye when it comes to pics.
I don't know how to rank these because the images are not all of the same coin, adding a confounding variable to my equation .
A bit overwhelming. IF I had to pick one from the first post I'd say Rauch. Yours is no slouch, @Suarez! From your second post I like the first one. I'f I'm the winner, PM me for my address. Steve
