Coin photo skills

Daggarjon,

I think you are selling yourself short. Those pictures are quite good, IMO. Well exposed, well focused, and the white balance looks pretty good too. The only thing I would suggest is that you (a) experiment a bit more with light placement and type (your lighting is a touch too diffused causing high-point overexposure), and (b) remove the background and make a monochrome background (by cropping it out).

But really, those pictures are better than 75% of the ones I see on these forums, IMHO.

Respectfully...Mike

 

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Thanks leadfoot

To be honest, the bulbs are i use are zero % diffused. I have 3 bulbs about 6 inches away from the coin in a triangular pattern. The camera is set on a tripod in the center. I use the camera to filter out the light. If i 'unplugg' a bulb or two, then i get dark spots on the coin, with shadows from the raised portions. I do have a 'wall' i built that is coated with a transparent paper that can diffuse the light for that 'ominus' light look. But from testing, it blocks out too much light. I will put that in tonight and take a photo using the same settings as the last coin image i posted above. Plus i figured that if i can filter out the light using the camera, why use the diffuser wall. But i can see that even though i filter out thelight, the affects of the light, ie bleeching, is still there.

If i cant get the lighting any better, then i may just have to accept that the images are good enough

Thanks!

 

How do you do that?

 

by adjusting the 'values' on my camera screen. By doing so, i can have the camera use more or less of the available light. There is also a 'histogram' telling me how much of the light i am using....

Maybe i am using the wrong terms, which wouldnt really surprise me. Looking at my camera book, the EV is the exposue Value. By playing with the Shutter Speed and Aperature value, my Exposure value, or EV goes up or down. It the EV is too high above 0, the coin gets way to bright (almost bleeched with no details, just a ball of light), the farther below 0 the EV goes the darker the coin is (untill its is mostly a dark braown/black blob). I just assumed what i was doing was having the camere restrict or allow the amount of light i wanted/needed. Instead, maybe that is the end result of what i was acheiving, but not the point of it.

Make sense? lol

 

Yeah, you are adjusting your exposure. Your camera suggests a certain exposure but that may not be the ideal exposure for that particular shot. If you "overexpose" the shot you let in more light and if you "underexpose" the shot you let in less light. This is done by either changing the shutter speed or the aperture.

 

right sorry if i confused you with the wrong terms i am far from a camera guro lol

There is a reason i use P.H.D. cameras only!!

 

BTW and FWIW
I was just looking over this thing I archived a few years back

http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources/refocus.html

 

1 of the trillion or so GIMP add-ons

It does sound like it could help ALOT of folks out though. But i doubt its as easy as click here, and its done... so the learning curve alone might make it harder then taking a steady shot.

tis why i have a tripod myself if the photo still comes out blurry, i re-shoot.

To make things easy though Reuben.. is there a site that posts ALL the GIMP plugins... i know you must be dieing to mention it

 

There is a repository similar to the firefox repository. It is much easier to just take a clear picture, but sometimes I just can't seem to do it and the discussion of the mathematical model to image enhancement I think is very interesting as it has broad applications for cellphones, NASA, images, music algorithms etc.

http://registry.gimp.org/

 

Hello Daggarjon,

What I see here is great improvement from the first pic to the last one, congrats.
- Black background is OK
- Tripod is OK
- Don't forget the self timer to avoid blurriness (if the word exists ?)
- Put the coin a few centimeters far from the background, so it's out of focus and you don't have to bother with dust and everything
- Play with the light while looking thru the viewfinder to appreciate which lightning you prefer more
- Use manual settings, slightly underexposed, so the black background is really black and the coin not too shiny
- Use a white neon bulb, or natural light on a cloudy day, and "automatic white balance" or whatever it's called in english if using indoor light.

That's what i've experimented for years and what I use at the moment (might be different in a few weeks though...)

Q

 

Oh,

And here are the results either on silver and brass :

 

Excellent photos, Cucumbor. And NICE coins, too. I especially like the silver.

 

yes, very nice images cucumbor great coins too lol - and thanks for the tips. I was thinking the same thing about raising the coin off the black background. In that image, the black is litteraly the front cover of a notebook i couldnt find anything else black to use at that moment.

 

great info