I'm not a super experienced photographer, but I did graduate from a cell phone to an old Canon Rebel XS fixed on a modified microscope stand with bellows/duplicating lens. My set up can handle up to (almost) 70 mm diameter coins and medals. Lighting is probably the biggest modifier for me and generally I find my set up serviceable, but felt like playing a bit today. My standard set up for lights is: 1. In the basement with a couple of 'daylight' equivalent lights in the sockets and no ambient light otherwise 2. 3x gooseneck Ott lights (switched from Jansjo Ikea lights which are also nice). 3. Diffuse the lights a bit with something blocking over (paper, white felt, something) Basic method--wiggle the lights around until I get a few shots that look reasonable. Today I tried two things. First I added a little more diffusion with a white translucent barrier all around the coin. Did a great job of killing the hot spots but made the coin look very flat. Next I got a couple of super cheap (cost and quality) makeup mirrors from Wal Mart. A '3X' magnification so not so useful in gazing at one's pores...but nice to have on a stand. I used these to bounce two of the three lights off of and onto the coin, using the third light in it's normal glory (slightly diffused with afore mentioned white felt). The coin itself is pretty nice. Lightly toned obverse, and more on the reverse. Flashy and with a decent amount of luster remaining. The reverse shows the typical circular tab toning found on many of these...I suspect this was a more heavily toned one that was lightly dipped, but isn't super white like some are found. The look with my standard lighting: I did bump the exposure up a tad on it, but otherwise unmolested. The least satisfactory effort is the one with the full diffusion barrier. I think this might work well for my more matte medals, but all this did was make the coin look dull and lifeless. Had to tweak the color a bit on the obverse, it came out too warm. Still a bit off but closer than the unmodified photo. And, finally, the one where I bounced the light around with the mirrors. A fun bit of relatively easy modifications and nice to see how much just a shift in lighting can change.
The last shot is far and away the best. The light diffusion worked well. I guess that's why you should only buy coins with a single-point light source.
