French Coin Re-Image & Some Digital Photography Tips

Darkhorse · December 29, 2003 2:19PM

This uncirculated French 10c coin has always been a bit of a challenge for me. Its surface is varied red-brown and splotchy in some areas, the reverse is a busy mass of neoclassical allegorical patriotic hodepodge, every element seems to blend into each other which makes it somewhat hard to make sense of in a photograph. In this photo I managed to get the right lighting which reveals all of its elements clearly. The kid is holding a hammer, you can see the Dupuis signature and you can make out the lion on the breastplate of Marrianne (I didn't notice it was a lion until I saw some of the photos on the screen). Another problem was the automatic metering in my camera, the dark bronze made the camera up the ISO* speed making the shot seem more grainy than it should be, so I used the manual setting so I could take the picture at 50 ISO (I love low ISO, I used to play with 25 speed film a lot).

Anyway, here she is.

Now for some digital photography tips. It's not so much digital photography tips so much as digital manipulation tips. One or two of you may find this useful, some of you may feel alienated by this, if you do then I apologize.

As I've mentioned before the best way to take picutres of some coins is to take them in direct light and underexpose a shot. Of course you can't take a straight-on shot of a coin and get direct light on it without YOU getting in the way. I told you before that if you shoot on an angle this problem can be solved.
The problem is that nobody wants a coin picture that's shot on an angle, you want it perfectly round and head on. You have to manipulate the image afterward which is tricky! But I've simplified things and those who use Photoshop or some image editing program may find this useful.

What I did was make a page with squares on them. In these squares I centered circles in them for various coin sizes. So I center a coin on a square then I'm ready to shoot.

After I've shot a coin I open the image in Photoshop and make a polygon around the distorted square (with the polygonal lasso tool). I copy thatr selection and make a new image (roughly 2000x2000 pixels to be safe, you may want to go less).

After I paste the selected polygon in the new image I free-transform/distort it and simply move the points of the polygon so they make a square again!

Your coin should seem nice and round after that. then you can do what you usually do to your image in post production. I usually put an elliptical marquee around it and copy-paste it into a new image. The French coin image was made using this sort of technique.

Sorry if the tips above totally flew over your head.

cacheman · December 29, 2003 2:23PM

Makes perfect sense to me, thanks....you want to email me the digital copy of your square/circle template?

tbirde56 · December 29, 2003 2:27PM

Cool tips in a simple to understand and illustrated explanation!
Now all I need, is a decent digital camera and Photoshop.

historygeek · December 29, 2003 2:30PM

Copy and pasted into my hard drive.

Aethelred · December 29, 2003 2:38PM

Great tips Phil! I'll have to print this thread, keep 'em coming.

Darkhorse · December 29, 2003 2:41PM

I deleted the template I made but it was easily created in Illustrator so I made another one. This is a 300dpi JPG so it'll print smoothly.

link

cacheman · December 29, 2003 3:00PM

U dah Man!!! Tanks!

Aethelred · December 29, 2003 3:17PM

When you get the time, some tips on lighting might be cool!

Coincracker · December 29, 2003 4:38PM

Great tips Phil, thanks for making me a little smarter today.

cosmicdebris · December 29, 2003 8:11PM

Great Stuff Phil. I have one of those French 10c coins that I have never been able to photograph. I'll give your process a shot.

cosmicdebris · December 29, 2003 9:27PM

Here is my first attempt( My coin is much darker than Phil's ):

One helpful hint, if you have photoshop use your guides to distort the image it make it so much easier.

cosmicdebris · December 29, 2003 9:39PM

Using guides. The first image shows the guide setup using Phil's template. The second image shows the image distorted to the guides. Note the bottom guide is spaced the same distance from the top guide that the outer left and right guides are from each other. This should get you fairly close to a round coin again.

cosmicdebris · December 29, 2003 10:03PM

Second attempt. Colors! Oh man I finally got the colors right on this coin using Phil's technique.

trozau · December 29, 2003 10:32PM

This post is worthy of a DPOTD, DPOTW, DPOTM or even a DPOTY. JMO

SYRACUSIAN · December 29, 2003 10:59PM

Not until Phil edits his initial post, in order to make it printable in A4

wybrit · December 29, 2003 11:05PM

Nice post and great information. Now all I need is the time!!

Fairlaneman · December 30, 2003 12:08AM

Here is about all I can do with the camera I have. The only thing that can be adjusted is the dark/light setting and the EV setting. Most of the time the EV is set at +05. Anyway the coin looks pretty close to in hand but I never know what it looks like to others because of different Monitor settings that may be used.

Opps I almost forgot. Usually, actually most of the time, Photo Shop must be used to get the correct color. I really envy the people that can just shoot the coin without any manipulation.

Ken

laurentyvan · December 30, 2003 12:18AM

This was done freehand without the white balance the first day I got the camera. I'm going to work with this coin until I can duplicate Darkhorse's picture-see you in about a month?

cosmicdebris · December 30, 2003 12:49AM

One more:

Askari · December 30, 2003 12:50AM

What a wonderful thread!!!

cosmicdebris · December 30, 2003 2:41AM

One more

After playing around with this technique for a few hours I have found the secret is to find the sweet spot. That being the camera angle, coin distance from the camera and light placement. The below image shows what the image looks like when you find the sweet spot before you doing anything to it in PhotoShop. Once you understand where this spot is you can start pumping out images.

Phil you should do a book on this.

FC57Coins · December 30, 2003 2:43AM

This is a very Un-American thread - you should collect FRANKIES!!!

oldshep · December 30, 2003 2:46AM

This is what this forum does so well - educate!! Thanks darkhorse for this post

Shep

cosmicdebris · December 30, 2003 2:51AM

Hey pug isn't there a leg out there somewhere waiting for you to hump it?

cacheman · December 30, 2003 3:21AM

I would suggest placing this coin on a black background/layer to bring out the colors more....

cosmicdebris · December 30, 2003 3:21AM

Copper!

Darkhorse · December 30, 2003 3:33AM

How many / what kind of lights are you using, Bill?
I ask because your new images seem a little dark, perhaps your just getting used to your new camera.

cosmicdebris · December 30, 2003 3:38AM

I am using 2 reveal 40 watt bulbs and 1 OTT Lite. I have the camera set at 100 ISO, WB set for bulbs and I am using SuperMacro mode with the camera set to auto focus. As far as darkness the colors I see are pretty close to what the coins are.

cosmicdebris · December 30, 2003 3:41AM

In Black:

Darkhorse · December 30, 2003 3:43AM

Hmm. I usually have 2 normal tungsten bulbs and use the camera's tungsten filter. Give that a shot with your camera too, just to see what results you get.
Experimentation iz fun.

cacheman · December 30, 2003 3:43AM

you might think about placing the two lights at 10 and 4 o'clock and raisng them a bit up from the coin plane....

laurentyvan · December 30, 2003 3:57AM

Darkhorse's thread is definately a candidate for DPOTD honors! Hint, hint...

cosmicdebris · December 30, 2003 4:13AM

Where do you get these tungston bulbs?

Another colorful attempt

Darkhorse · December 30, 2003 4:25AM

Tungsten bulbs are normal lightbulbs.

MacCrimmon · December 30, 2003 5:55AM

Very Nice Thread, Phil!!

I'll have to try the elliptical thing when I back in the 'shop'.

1jester · December 30, 2003 6:09AM

Very informative thread, Darkhorse! Thanks for the tips.

Aethelred · December 30, 2003 12:05PM

A person could learn so much here!

BTW - What was that thing with a bald guy and a bell?

Cocoinut · December 30, 2003 3:46PM

Thanks for the tips. I don't have Photoshop, but I might be able to do the same thing with some other software. I have some dark copper/bronze coins that I've had problems photographing.

BTW, those French 5 and 10 centime coins are a couple of my favorite Darkside designs.

Jim

Darkhorse · December 30, 2003 4:00PM

<< <i>A person could learn so much here!

BTW - What was that thing with a bald guy and a bell? >>

Not sure. It sure was weird looking so I picked it up as a novelty item.

cosmicdebris · December 30, 2003 10:25PM

I tried some regular lightbulbs and different lighting positions and came up with this

laurentyvan · December 30, 2003 11:16PM

Cosmic, I like the second one better-looks a little more natural. Which most closely resembles the coin in hand?

cosmicdebris · December 30, 2003 11:30PM

The second one is the closest I have come to yet.

Darkhorse · December 31, 2003 5:00AM

hey bill can you post a link to one of your raw images?

cosmicdebris · December 31, 2003 9:53AM

Phil here is a link to a 2.63 meg image straight from the camera.

JMOORE · December 31, 2003 1:34PM

My first post on the Dark Side. These coins have been sitting in a box for years.

Thanks to Phil for the great photography tips!

JMOORE · December 31, 2003 1:34PM

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JMOORE · December 31, 2003 1:35PM

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JMOORE · December 31, 2003 1:36PM

JMOORE · December 31, 2003 1:36PM

French Coin Re-Image &amp; Some Digital Photography Tips

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French Coin Re-Image & Some Digital Photography Tips