I recently had the pleasure of meeting a few forum members at the 2017 National Battlefield Coin Show in Gettysburg PA. @SuperDave stopped by to show me his new purchases and chat about taking photos of coins. I happened to have my low cost rig with me and we decided to snap a few photos of a few of his coins with it. I'll post my quick photos of the coins using my rig and he can post his photos of the same coins with his rig and describe the equipment he uses. My photos were taken with my phone, samsung galaxy note 4, with the coins inside a dino-lite photo box. My rig costs about $199 for the photo box and a Note 4 will set you back about $300 these days (they are not new tech) My photos have no editing done to them, I just placed the coin inside the box and snap the photo, flip the coin over and snap the reverse, no editing.
I shoot with a used Canon Rebel XS, which can be had for under $100. The lens is a bellows-mounted El-Nikkor 75mm, and if you pay more than $40 for one you're getting ripped off. Another $40 for the bellows, and a cheap tripod, and you're in business for less than $200. There are limitations to such a setup which would take more money to rectify, and the learning curve is steep. And it doesn't make phone calls. OTOH @coinzip had his little white light box with a couple of lights pointed at it and a hole in the top through which he pointed the phone and hit the shutter. He didn't even delay the shutter, just hit it with a finger. Spoiler: His rig saw colors as well as mine, and I like his images of the Morgan better than mine (for the moment). The Cent was pretty easy. These images are half-size, by the way. The Morgan, not so much. I threw everything but the kitchen sink at it, even tried bounced indirect lighting, and am still not satisfied. These shots had pretty much every light I owned pointed at the coin - my exposures were faster than 1/1000 - and it's just_beginning to capture the color. I went through a dozen iterations with the obverse, and have 200MB of images of this coin now. I think it's time to rebuild my Halogen Flamethrower™ rig.
Taking photos of coins is a hobby in itself. The colors and detail look more natural on Dave's Penny and the detail is better on the Morgan but the color needs work. But unless you are holding these coins in hand color is very subjective.
Speaking of flamethrowers... one of my lamps exploded last week and I suffered a low voltage electrical burn. But Mickey and Minnie made it all better.
Wow that bellows really helps with field of depth... @tpsadler if you could overlay the colors from my photos onto @SuperDave 's you would have it what the coins look like in hand or very very close, in my humble opinion. There are a few challenges that a bellows creates, but there is in my opinion no better way to capture field of depth. Great photos Dave.... if we lived closer I would keep you busy with auction lots.
Depth of field is a function of aperture, and one of the advantages of a rig like mine is I can force the aperture to a setting which I know will provide sufficient DoF. However, sensor size also is in play with DoF; the smaller the sensor, the greater the field of depth for a given aperture setting. That's why small point-and-shoot cameras can give sufficient DoF for a coin at (for instance) f/3.5, when I'm forced to work at f/8 (with the concurrent increased lighting problems) to achieve it. An advantage @coinzip had for this specific application was his lightbox. As long as you have enough light, and a wider aperture like his Note was certainly using will help, colors come out much more naturally than in more direct light. That, I think, is because much more light was able to "bounce" nearly vertically off of the coin and into his lens. However, that has the tradeoff of inability to depict luster, because it kills the contrast which is required to show it. This is why axial lighting can be effective with color; in such a setup, the light hitting the lens is all coming absolutely vertically from the coin. The 1879-S we're showing here, under the room lighting of the show, displays a subtle pastel color and terrific luster. The seller's counteroffer on price caused me to snap it up, as much for the challenge of imaging a toner in a slab as for the coin itself. And as you can see, imaging toning in a slab is a challenge for me.
Yup! Some coins are easy and some are a real challenge. It's somehow strangely satisfying to really capture what a coin looks like in-hand:
