Testing new camera setup

spyglassdesign

Got a couple new toys for my camera for taking pictures of coins (and other things). A ring light for my camera and a light box.

The first picture is with the ring light, second in the lightbox. The third with both together. I think I like the light box better as it shows the luster better, but it doesn't show as much detail on the devices. Seems the ring light lights up too much of the coin to show much depth. I want to figure out how to get the luster shine AND the details better. Maybe I'll play with the different light levels some more...

I'm also using a 10x macro lens.

FWIW the second picture most closely resembles in hand.

d9lowe

I personally like the third picture. Nice pictures overall!

spyglassdesign

@d9lowe said:
I personally like the third picture. Nice pictures overall!

Thanks... now if I can figure out how to get the luster of the second to show through more on the third I'd be happy!

FlyingAl

I find that LED desk lamps work best - ring lights only seem to succeed in blowing out the coin in my experience.

Here's a comparison of images I have taken. The first is with a ring light, while the second is a set up of two LED desk lamps. The second is a more recent picture, but it should give you an idea of how the true coin look comes through much better.

Jzyskowski1

Here’s a picture of my latest lighting/viewing set up. Couple surrounding lights and my trusty iPhone 7 and away we go
Your pictures look good. Practice is the key and good luck 😉🙀🦫

lilolme

@spyglassdesign said:

@d9lowe said:
I personally like the third picture. Nice pictures overall!

Thanks... now if I can figure out how to get the luster of the second to show through more on the third I'd be happy!

Frist i am not a photographer at all so take this comment knowing I do not know this stuff.

When trying to see what the luster would be like when photographed, I just kind of 'eyeball' it first. That simply means I view the coin with the lighting and with my eyes in approximately the same position that the camera would be.

Two lamps/bulbs should produce two cartwheels. With one light/bulb on either side of the slab you should get something resembling and X or + with the luster. I don't have a ring light but it sounds like it produces what I call a flat lighting where there is not really a point light source and therefore more even lighting across the coins. Many like this type of lighting and will have setups to produce it. Can diffuse the light source to make the light spread out and not have the 'hot spot' luster beams. I like the luster beams.

Here is my cheap setup which I take in and out of the closet when I want to use it. Just a box and light/bulb on either side of coin with the 20 year old automatic camera on a tripod in front of it. This is sort of how one views a coin under a lamp. It is good enough for me but far from a true good photo. But you can notice the two luster beams / cartwheels and is what I see when viewing the coin with these lamps.

ricko

You guys are way beyond my capabilities in coin photography. I take a picture with my phone and post it.... But I am highly impressed with the efforts of others here. Cheers, RickO

The_Dinosaur_Man

I ditched using a ring light for coins a couple of years ago. You should look into axial lighting. Get a thin piece of glass or something of the sort, angle it at 45 degrees or so, bounce the light off that and onto the coin and that will fully illuminate the fields. Examples below...

spyglassdesign

Thanks for the suggestions!

DelawareDoons

@The_Dinosaur_Man said:
I ditched using a ring light for coins a couple of years ago. You should look into axial lighting. Get a thin piece of glass or something of the sort, angle it at 45 degrees or so, bounce the light off that and onto the coin and that will fully illuminate the fields. Examples below...

Super misleading for some coins, though. Gotta put that caveat up there any time you talk about axial.

The_Dinosaur_Man

@DelawareDoons said:

Super misleading for some coins, though. Gotta put that caveat up there any time you talk about axial.

For some coins, sure. Collectors like angling their coins around under a light so it's important that someone browsing online can get something of the same experience as someone seeing the same coins in person.

spyglassdesign

Thanks for the suggestions! > @The_Dinosaur_Man said:

@DelawareDoons said:

Super misleading for some coins, though. Gotta put that caveat up there any time you talk about axial.

For some coins, sure. Collectors like angling their coins around under a light so it's important that someone browsing online can get something of the same experience as someone seeing the same coins in person.

That's my goal. I don't ever want a coin coming back that I sell for not matching the description. If I think it's a great coin, I want the viewer to have the best possible experience as close to what I see as possible. I see so many terrible pictures on eBay, I don't want to be like those. Especially the intentionally bad ones.

DelawareDoons

@The_Dinosaur_Man said:

@DelawareDoons said:

Super misleading for some coins, though. Gotta put that caveat up there any time you talk about axial.

For some coins, sure. Collectors like angling their coins around under a light so it's important that someone browsing online can get something of the same experience as someone seeing the same coins in person.

I feel you. Whenever I use axial, though, I also provide straight on shots, just like you did there. Only way to be 100% honest imho.

spyglassdesign

I think for the reflective coins I've come to the same conclusion as @The_Dinosaur_Man regarding the ring light. It will probably work well for flatter coins where the luster isn't a big draw like the dark brown pennys etc.

Here are a couple shots with a couple basic Photoshop filters to try to sharpen it up a bit, no ring light. I think I like the second a little more as it doesn't make the cheek look as harsh (it doesn't look harsh at all in real life).

lilolme

Those pictures appear to dull to me for an Unc Morgan dollar. You should not have to photoshop anything on a Morgan dollar although some like to for toning to get the colors better or maybe more correct. From your comments I believe you want to capture the luster beam and not a flat even light. Your photo appears to only have one luster beam and therefore one light. Don't know if that is true or not but get two lights (minimum) with one on either side to form an X or + with the crossing luster beams. A lustrous Morgan dollar should light up a lot more. I just took this picture as quickly as I could, maybe 20 seconds after turning on the camera, and didn't even try to line up anything (you can see the photo is crooked). It is a 20 year old auto focus camera, so the camera is about as simple as it can be.

spyglassdesign

@lilolme yeah lighting is my weakness right now I think. You are correct, that is my goal.

The difficulty I'm having right now is that no matter how I light it up, I'm either missing detail on the cheek which sorta hides the texture, or it overly highlights the marks on the cheek and exaggerates them.

I am implementing a couple tips from this video which helped a little: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lflzUgd6NKc&t=76s

FranklinHalfAddict

You won’t get luster to show using a ring light. Ring lights are really only useful to illuminate the entire surface of a coin evenly. Great for toners.

lilolme

I don't know your photo setup but as I stated previously, to get an idea of what the camera will see you can first view the dollar with your eyes in approximately the same spot as the camera. If you can not see the luster that you want to photograph, then try moving the lights or the slab/coin until you can. This is just to get it close. Then with the camera can adjust it a little more. Some have their camera linked to a computer screen to get a better view. So what I am saying is, if you can't see the luster, then the camera probably won't either. Once you get a set up it will become much simpler but still may require some tweaking (of lights or other) between slabs/coins as some are just a little different on how they reflect the light.

spyglassdesign

@lilolme yeah that's what I'm doing. This is my current setup with a 4x macro. I've been playing around with a handheld light source as well. May need a couple flip on led's or something.

lilolme

That helps a lot. You are doing about the same thing I did with the coin position and camera. But a difference is the light position(s). The coin kind of looks like it is in a shadow. Try this - take the coin out of the box but set up the camera and coin the same as it is. Then put a desk lamp to the left side and another to the right side of the coin and in front of the coin or toward the camera. This would be close to what I just did. You can then adjust the light position and possible tilt the slab a little to get the luster beams to come through. Again you can initially do this just by viewing it with your eyes. Now this may not be the set up that you want but it should allow you to see the photo you want to take.

spyglassdesign

@lilolme I may give that a try. I might pick up a couple small clamp on led's too and lower the ambient box light some. I've got a lot of options to try! Thanks for the input!

Jzyskowski1

I suggest you try taking a few pictures with natural light. Indirect sun light. Go to the window sill and try some different angles and some straight on shots.
Keep practicing 😉🙀🦫

lilolme

@spyglassdesign said:
@lilolme I may give that a try. I might pick up a couple small clamp on led's too and lower the ambient box light some. I've got a lot of options to try! Thanks for the input!

Those small clamp on LED's sound like they should work. One on the left top and right top. They would be in front of the coin or between coin and camera. Then just adjust them to get the best luster. Oh and you can tilt the coin slightly if needed (that is slide the bottom out so it is tilted back a little) but then adjust camera to get best straight on shot.

Now all of this is based on if the picture I showed is close to something you want. As that is what I basically did. If you are looking for something else, then ignore what I am saying.

spyglassdesign

@lilolme yep that's the general idea. I'll report back once I find something I like

FlyingAl

I think I'll jump in here with what I do for my shots and some advice I've gotten.

1) Put the coin on the floor, and forget the box. Seems like a major hassle from my end (though this is my opinion). Use a tripod and aim the camera 90 degrees straight down at the coin.
2) I use two lights generally at 9 and 3 o'clock but I can alter them slightly based on the look I'm going for. LED desk lamps work phenomenally for me.
3) Put the lamps as close to the camera lens as you can. When I take shots the lens practically touches the lamps.

If you follow these steps, here's a few unedited photos I took very recently. Editing would be some pretty simple straightening and cropping, I rarely touch anything else. I assume that you may be attempting some slab shots as well so I threw a few that I took in there. Just simple camera adjusting with those steps can get some pretty desirable results (I think ) You can see the luster bands @lilolme mentioned and the coin looks very similar to the in hand look. The key is the lighting here.
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spyglassdesign

@FlyingAl nice thanks!

Mr_Spud

2 cheap Quans led lights work good for me with my iPhone to show luster, if that’s what you are going for. I imagine they would work just as well with your fancier camera. Here’s an example picture I took with my iPhone using 2 Quans lights at 3 and 9 o’clock like FlyingAl said. Only the toning on the obverse mutes the luster, but look at the reverse to see what I mean

Here’s the lights I use, I unscrew the front to remove the diffuser that comes with them to get luster

If you are really serious and want to learn how to take really great coin pictures with a fancy camera, find a copy of Mark Goodman’s book Numismatic Photography. Here’s a used copy of the 1st edition on eBay right now for a decent price. He wrote a 2nd edition, but I never read it and don’t know if it has much more than the first edition, but it runs about 3 times the price as this one. I remember getting the first edition back in the day when he first wrote it, he was a very active forum member at the time and taught everybody on the forum. It really helped a lot when I used to have a fancy camera similar to yours

spyglassdesign

@Mr_Spud thanks!

spyglassdesign

@Mr_Spud

lilolme

Glad a couple more jumped in. What I mentioned earlier about taking the slab out of the box and with the same slab and camera positioning, then you can just put a lamp (could even be a table lamp with the shade removed) on either side and take a picture. This to see if it produces a picture close to what you want. If it does, then you know the photo lighting you want/need and can adjust the stuff however you want to get those results. Anyway you got some information now and I think this is going to work out. Just need to get the slab out of that 'shadow' it is currently in.

Here is a picture I took recently of a 84CC with what I call the rusty die reverse (not sure that is official). It is kind of an ugly look to the eagle (not white) but I just had to have one in the past so I got one. Same set up but the DMPL fields show much less luster as they should.

spyglassdesign

@lilolme it's not in a shadow, the box is lit up from above if that wasn't obvious. But I can change the temperature and brightness so I'll play with that and the clip lights I just got on order and see if I can make it work.

I haven't tried it yet but I do suspect the ring light will work great for matte finish coins.

lilolme

I understand about the 'shadow' but I didn't know how to describe it so I used the 'shadow' in the quotes trying to indicate that it was not getting the more direct lighting that should produce the luster beams or cartwheel. Anyway again I think you got the information now and it will work out.

spyglassdesign

@lilolme ah you mean the flat fields, gotcha. Thanks again!

spyglassdesign

@Mr_Spud I had a credit on my credit card so I ended up getting the second edition. Should be here by the end of the week. 👍

Mr_Spud

@spyglassdesign said:
@Mr_Spud I had a credit on my credit card so I ended up getting the second edition. Should be here by the end of the week. 👍

That’s awesome! It’s a great book.

lilolme

@spyglassdesign said:
@Mr_Spud I had a credit on my credit card so I ended up getting the second edition. Should be here by the end of the week. 👍

Now you may wind up changing a lot of stuff but probably for the better. Come back and let us know if you find some good (simple) tricks.

spyglassdesign

Oh I'm sure I'll be mixing it up a good bit over the coming week! I'll let you know how it goes!

spyglassdesign

I think it's safe to say the double light idea works well. I technically have 3 lights with the light box as well.