[Photo] Advice needed to improve photos

Please be specific about which coin photo you are critiquing. And please don't critique the grades of the coins, whether or not you think they have been cleaned/dipped, etc. Feel free to PM me with your thoughts on that topic.

The Setup

• Halogen lamp w/ dimmer turned away from the camera
• Fluorescent ceiling light
• Two (2) Ikea Jansjo Desk Work LED Lamp Lights + 44 lb vellum filter
• Canon T5i
• 18-55mm IS STM (kit lens)
• Tripod
• Manual settings (no flash)

I set the tripod next to my desk and flip the camera to face down.

I set the camera to manual, pick a shutter speed between 1/60 and 1/125 with an f-stop to match so that the white balance is at zero.

Results were cropped with Photoscape.

The Questions

1) I pretty much position the Ikea lamps at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, but I'm not sure whether to point them parallel to the desk surface, directly onto the coins (but at a slight angle), or whatnot. I usually just move them until it looks nice to me.

2) I tried playing with the white balance settings a bit on the 1882-CC. I think I chose the option for fluorescent lighting which apparently corrects for color and made the coin color more "true to life". What other settings should I be adjusting?

I'm hoping to buy a copy of "Numismatic Photography" soon.

I'm open to any and all suggestions. I'm not very happy with the focusing on some of them. Thanks.

(Edit: pictures re-uploaded per suggestion)

* Pretty sure I made a poor purchase decision on the 1900-O. Has it been dipped too much?

 

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Hey Doug. For one thing, attaching your pics to posts as media is weird. Just use the "Upload a File" button at the bottom of the reply dialogue. Also, images at 1900x1900 are unnecessary - we're not looking for bacteria on the coins.

You got the white balance correct on 5 and 6, but the rest came out with too much red. I try to get the white balance as accurate as I can, but I don't worry it it's off a bit, because I can adjust it in post-processing. I use Paint.NET, a open-source, free image editor.

I sucked some of the red out of your first image. This is probably closer to the actual color of the coin...

 

The best advice for you right now is in your own post; buy Numismatic Photography by Mark Goodman and read it.

 

Mark's book is excellent, but until you get it, there is also a thread in the WYNTK Forum (What You Need To Know) about photography on the NGC forums that answers a lot of question and provides links to other resources.

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1274447#Post1274447

Chris

 

That works for me. I have found that playing with 1 light or two, positioned 90deg apart up to 180deg apart, positioning high pointing more directly downward, vs positioning low and pointing at closer to 45-deg to the coin, all will make quite a difference. Certain metals will look better in different lighting. So after a bunch of experimentation I've ended up with different setups for silver and bronze, for example. But of course the bottom line is that you'd like to have your lighting set for the best looking image for any particular coin.

After fiddling with these automatic settings, I found that a) getting lights that are as close to "daylight" helps a ton, and b) using a specific Kelvin setting for white balance to those lights is better than just setting the camera to "fluorescent" or whatever else.

 

If you're using a combination of halogen, fluorescent, and LED's, it's going to confuse the heck out of automatic white balance settings. See if your camera has a MANUAL setting. You can set up your lighting, put a white piece of paper in front of the lens, and have the camera "learn" that this is white under your lights.

 

Done.

I thought that "more was better". So 500x500 is enough for people to critique the photos?

Yes, it is.

What steps did you take in Paint.NET to "suck" the red out?

 

I use Photoshop and came up with this formula for your coin:

 

Under the Adjustments button, select Curves from the drop-down menu.



Select RGB in the Transfer Map dialog.



Deselect Green and Blue, so that only Red is selected, then drag-click the center line down. The image will change color as you move the line.



I'll take it further and achieve the effects coop posted above. Photoshop is the preferred tool of professionals, but it costs a heap of money, whereas Paint.NET is free, and more than adequate for editing coin pics.

Under the Adjustments button, select Hue/Saturation.



I desaturated the image by 30%, which seems to work well for silver.



You can also adjust the Brightness and Conrast to clarify the image.



Finally, to resize, go to Image - Resize. Make sure Maintain Aspect Ratio is checked. Type 500 (or any other size you want) into the Width box, click OK.



If you want to insert your full images into posts, rather than thumbnails, click Full Image, and the image will be inserted wherever your cursor is.

 

Here are both sides of your 1879S processed into one image. It may be a bit dark. I don't know what the original coin looks like. The goal of my post-processing is always to make the image look as much like the coin in hand as possible. For that, I need the coin in hand.

 

I think your best lighting scheme is on the 1900-O, which I've processed the same way...



There could be a little more light coming from about 8 o'clock on the obverse, to light the face a bit better.

 

Yawl are very technical, I use my cell phone and a loupe...

 

You only get what you put into something. But editing can help make images improve.

 

I don't get many complaints, except when I have to many beer, then everything is blurry and I think it's double....

 

Kind of like this?

 

That's exactly what I'm talking about.. LOL

 

Or you may feel like this:

 

Taunt as you like, but John was right on.........

 

The advice is right on if the images are taken and there's no opportunity to re-shoot. But this kind of manipulation, especially to the extremes needed for these originals, is always going to degrade the color depth of the image. Re-shooting with accurate color, brightness and light positions is always going to generate a better final product.

 

Absolutely, yes. Ultimately the goal is to take a picture that needs minimal editing.