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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Denis Richard, post: 24850466, member: 112673&quot;]You can shoot a mirrored coin straight down and not see the camera if you&#039;re using axial lighting. To demonstrate, I found the image below on eBay, and it illustrates the perils of shooting a mirror finish coin straight down in regular light. You can see the reflected skin tones of the hand of the guy who took the picture. </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1592526[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The secret is it&#039;s not about moving the camera, tilting the coin, or moving the lights because photographers don&#039;t light a mirror, they light what it is reflecting, and that should inform your lighting and camera placement decisions.&nbsp; If you photographed a mirror on a wall, the only light you&#039;d see hitting it would be on the mirror frame, the rest would bounce away. If you were in a dark room the mirror in the photograph would be black. You have to light what the mirror is reflecting to make the image work. Same thing with a mirror coin.&nbsp; For this reason, I often place a white card in the path of the coin reflection to add texture and a gradient across its surface.</p><p><br /></p><p>Below are two angles of the same left coin as in the eBay photo above.[ATTACH=full]1592527[/ATTACH]</p><p>This one is straight down with axial lighting and next is the rest of the set.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1592536[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>The image below is also shot straight down (without axial lighting) but the coin is slightly angled. The light is to the left and a carefully placed light diffuser is acting as a white card in the light of the reflection. A white reflector is placed behind the coin to light the rim. The light gradient on the mirror background, and the texture in the rest of the coin, is a result of the distance the diffuser is placed between the light and the coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1592528[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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