Picture Lighting

Riley1955

Newbie here. After reading numerous post on GTG the one thing that stands out is picture clarity. In order to solicit a meaningful opinion from the numerous members willing to help I have picked on the quality of the pictures as the number 1 thing that I can do when submitting to the group. So in an effort to determine some lighting choices I'm trying, here are a couple examples of my work. Please feel free to make suggestions/improvements that you might think would help me. I'm using a older Olympus C-740 which is the best camera I own. Some desk lighting and some with added camera flash. Thank you.

Bill

Desk lighting only.

Desk lighting only.

Desk lighting w/camera flash.

Desk lighting w/camera flash.

TomB

There are some excellent threads on coin photography on the forum that you may be able to find. These have lots of useful information from very talented coin photographers in them. Additionally, Mark Goodman wrote the gold standard of coin photography books (about 15-years ago now!) and it can be found for sale online.

As for your specific coin example...

1) Lay the coin flat.
2) Do what you can to have the coin surface and camera lens parallel to one another.
3) In general, lighting that comes from the top illuminates most coins better than lighting from the sides.
4) Focus!
5) Flash photography is extremely tricky with coins.
6) Move the lights around as needed while looking at the image to get the best results.
7) Practice.
8) Not all coins photograph well.
9) Good luck!

Riley1955

@TomB said:
There are some excellent threads on coin photography on the forum that you may be able to find. These have lots of useful information from very talented coin photographers in them. Additionally, Mark Goodman wrote the gold standard of coin photography books (about 15-years ago now!) and it can be found for sale online.

As for your specific coin example...

1) Lay the coin flat.
2) Do what you can to have the coin surface and camera lens parallel to one another.
3) In general, lighting that comes from the top illuminates most coins better than lighting from the sides.
4) Focus!
5) Flash photography is extremely tricky with coins.
6) Move the lights around as needed while looking at the image to get the best results.
7) Practice.
8) Not all coins photograph well.
9) Good luck!

Thanks Tom!