Coin lighting setup
yspsales
Posts: 2,297 ✭✭✭✭✭
What is your coin lighting setup?
Despite my years of sports and wedding photography, reflective metal is a tough hurdle.
Accumulated some other gear over the years as I dabbled in macro/still life
Currently using a Kaiser copy stand with a Falcon Eyes SO-28TD continuous lighting.
My camera combo is a Sony A7ii with a 90mm macro lens.
Also, I have a Nikon bellows with adapter.
I have some dedicated flashes, but know I probably need a second or third more direct/controllable light source.
BST: KindaNewish (3/21/21), WQuarterFreddie (3/30/21), Meltdown (4/6/21), DBSTrader2 (5/5/21) AKA- unclemonkey on Blow Out
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I actually just finished making a custom one…almost. Still missing one bulb as I already ruined it through mishandling.
I’ll try to remember to post a photo or two of it when I get home.
I use diffused lighting (diffuser paper over the lights) to try and spread out the light evenly and avoid hotspots from spot light sources. However, it is still very difficult to avoid bright spots on the coins, high points with rub or where a coin has been slightly polished. Heck any proof like coin is like a mirror reflecting the light. Those areas will reflect very bright no matter what you do, when lighted.
My solution has been to shoot raw photos to give more leverage/dynamic range between light and dark, and shoot the coin about 2-3 stops underexposed. Then you have to deal with a little noise, but modern digital cameras deal with that much better than they used to. Good luck.
Whatever light comes in the window or from the overhead incandescent..... Sorry, not a great photographer. For beauty pictures, I rely on TruViews or what other members will do for me. Cheers, RickO
I use IKEA lamps I assume they are LED?? I also use a diffuser and add to that diffuser when shooting proofs.
WS
Thanks for the feedback
BST: KindaNewish (3/21/21), WQuarterFreddie (3/30/21), Meltdown (4/6/21), DBSTrader2 (5/5/21) AKA- unclemonkey on Blow Out
I use the Jansjo lights that Ikea used to sell. Unfortunately they have discontinued them. I add the plastic tube that holds half dollars over the head of the light to act as a diffuser. The small size and gooseneck allow me to get the lighting right where I need it.
Today's digital sensors are much more capable of retaining details in highlights than they are in the shadows. If you over expose by a full stop while shooting raw and pull back the exposure when processing your raw file, you will have much better luck with image quality. Trying to bring up the exposure on an underexposed image will result in amplified noise.
A 14 bit raw image contains a total of 8,192 steps of gray between white and black across each color channel of RGB. So you have 3 channels of information being combined for the overall image for a theoretical total of approximately 550 Billion colors. A typical 8 bit JPEG is 256 steps per color channel with a theoretical maximum of 16 Million colors. The sensor on a digital camera is not linear, they are designed to assign a larger portion of the bits to the highlight end of the exposure. This is why you are able to recover image detail in what appears to be overexposed images far more easily than trying to recover shadow detail in an underexposed image. This only applies to shooting RAW files.
@jtlee321 you’re right about how modern sensors work, but I’ve found the bright spots on some coins to be so incredibly bright the sensors still can’t deal with it. In those cases a small under exposure can help a little. And yes, like I said you have the penalty of dealing with noise. I guess for my taste, I don’t have any issues capturing the shadows, but lots of issues with the highlights blowing out, so I’d never overexpose intentionally when shooting coins.
These are great, I use them too. Well, until the switch inevitably fails. Thankfully there are fixes people have posted online to deal with it. Every single one I’ve had the switch fail eventually.
Don't forget your histograms, I forgot to mention those. They are what you really need to be looking at to judge the exposure.
That's where you're almost certainly more experienced than I am. I only know enough to get myself in trouble although I occasionally get lucky and take a nice photo.
Kaiser stand, RS1 camera holder, up to 4 of their light sockets on 2 of their posts for the sockets. Use LEDs or Par30 halogens. Nikon camera and lenses. A few other gadgets to enhance accuracy of the focusing.
LED bulbs and a webcam
Corina's coin shop
https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipPLnu7mVOu-k4G6ijxQM8qOBS4YPtMbS3-SF6Td
Get Mark Goodman's Book, Numismatic Photography. He used to post here quite a bit.
Reading it skipped me ahead several grades.
Here’s a couple photos of mine.
First time ever trying to build my own.
Those look awesome
Mr_Spud
Thanks! It works pretty well.
Right now I have xenon bulbs in it. They’re very similar to halogen and they get WAY too hot. Hot to the point where I can’t even handle the lamps by hand to move them after a few minutes.
I think they’re either 60 or 70W. I’m going to test out some 20W bulbs to see if that makes enough of a difference. If not I’ll have to switch to incandescent or something else.