Coin photo opinions

Got a new phone for Christmas, has a pretty good camera on it. Trying it out and want to see what you guys think. I know it is not to caliber of some of you on here, but want to know if it is decently passable.



Sent from my ZTE B2017G using Tapatalk

 

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If you could 'crop things a bit, I might even like it.......

Looks more than acceptable.......

 

It's not too bad.... but you may want to get a little more light onto the surfaces. Also, was this taken hand-held? If so, try proping your phone up in a way that will allow it to be perfectly still when you take the photo. A stack of books or whatever should work fine.

 

I have not gotten there yet. I just decided to try it out, once I get opinions and that I plan on setting up a more "professional" station. I also uploaded them from my phone so I did not realize how BIG they were, definite crop is ensued.

 

This was taken hand held. I remember the book trick, just wanted to see how things went first, but it is something I planned on.

 

Very good! Please don't get me wrong... it's not bad for hand-held, but you'll be much happier with the results when using the book trick or the like. Same with lights.. try adding another (start at 10 and 2 o'clock but move as you see fit, or even add a third) and see what happens. The fact is that perfectly acceptable, even good photos can be taken with without needing big or expensive setups. Work at it a bit, figure out what's best for you, and as long as you're pleased with the results (if for sharing or your own collection), that's all that really matters.

P.S. Congrats on the new phone/toy.

 

You can also buy a bluetooth shutter release on Amazon (or elsewhere I'm sure) for under $10. Then you can trigger the photo without touching the camera, and that will help with 'shake' too. The flexible lights from Ikea are nice, inexpensive and can be moved around easily.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20169658/
(The lights I purchased based on the recommendations of many here. I saw one person post a photo with ping pong balls cut out and over the light as a diffuser.)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EUAS20U?psc=1
(The one I bought. Amazing how easy it was to use once I realized the battery was in the package and not the device...and then put it in facing the right way--my only excuse was I didn't have my glasses on and my near vision sucks).

edited to add: and the photo you posted is better than most I see on eBay.

 

Those are honest photos.....The coin looks great & is accurately portrayed! Sometimes the super high caliber cameras make the coin look like gallery art with post processing & enhancements. Your shots look like a real coin.....and that's a good thing! I like 'em.

 

Yup. He ain't doin' too bad.

 

Looks much better than a lot of stuff you see on eBay and a lot of these threads. As @green18 said, cropping it will help tremendously.

 

I didn't realize they had these for phones. Excellent suggestion!

 

Nice to hear that from a professional.......and also a guy I like and admire, and respect and.......his take on things is most profound, to say the least.

Do I get the part?

I'll go stand in the corner again.......must be the blasted scotch.

 

But I meant what I said......

 

I see they also have a led set up for the phone.
https://www.amazon.com/Selfie-Lavin...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=32PCSGG4ES9WMFQ2E4CZ

 

The shots are not bad at all. Adding a 2nd light so that all the illumination does not come from straight above would "improve" them. It also looks like you tilted the camera to get the light to shine better on the coin,so that the whole coin appears tilted and parts are not in focus, so getting the camera and coin lined up would also "improve" the shots. And of course cropping.

A note on cropping...you always want to do some amount of downsizing. Straight cropping and publishing at 100% will show the problems that are introduced by the camera sensor. Note also that non-integer downsizing creates blur artifacts. I would recommend a 2x downsizing before any cropping, then crop out the coin from the downsized image and publish at 100%. It may be a little on the small size, but will give you best publishable quality.

 

You can get pretty nice images out of a phone camera with a little practice. I've seen better by others, but this was shot with me standing up and holding the coin and my phone in hand underneath a ceiling fan with three lights. I used the free photoscape to edit it. Certainly not a pro shot, but I think it looks pretty good and is very accurate to the look of the coin in hand. This coin was cracked out of the slab to put it in my album, I have a very difficult time with slabs taking images this way.

 

Definitely more light and crop your images. Hopefully @Ike Skywalker sees this and chimes in. I know that he knows his way around iphonography.

 

IMO, the sharpness of the image grades 95% while the lighting could be improved.

Just once, I wish one of the image posters would do an experiment using a cell phone to photo the same coin with several DIFFERENT types of light (including fluorescent).

 

The tough part with that is getting the white balance right.

 

You can zoom/crop the image when taking the picture with the pinch/zoom method.