My first crack at real photography

PeakRarities

I've been getting by with Iphone pictures and videos, but I figured if I was going to start doing this for real, I needed to start taking real photos.

Luckily, @FlyingAl has this all figured out already and he directed me what camera, lens, and software I needed to buy. Yesterday, I unpacked my new camera equipment and got it set up on a rather inexpensive copy stand I found on amazon. My copy stand ended up being too short for slab pics with the 100mm lens, so instead of replacing the copy stand I went to target and bought a 50mm lens. Canon now has an app that connects to my phone, so I learned that can shoot remotely without causing any shakiness, and importing the pictures through said app is extremely easy.

Anyways, I took some of my first shots and got them over to Alex for feedback. With some tweaks and adjustments, I think I'm starting to get the hang of it now. I used photoshop for cropping and some minor post processing to get the colors accurate, and to my eye these look pretty decent. I thought it would be fun to shoot 3 of my favorite photogenic coins, which also happen to have truviews that we can compare to. Im sure ill pick up some more tips and tricks along the way, but this is yet another example of how amazing this forum is. This was a steep learning curve for me, but when people like @FlyingAl have this to a science and are willing to freely share their techniques, it makes it easy for those of us who are otherwise technologically challenged 😅. Feedback is welcomed!

1. 1854 Kellogg $20

TV- A bit too yellow, also makes it look sorta cleaned IMO

2. High relief saint

TV- Phils got me on this one, he's able to show the depth real well with the high reliefs.

3. 1799 $10 small stars

TV- maybe a bit overexposed but generally not bad. Mine are truer to how the coin looks in hand.

RobertScotLover

Great job

Manifest_Destiny

Looks good!

coinbuf

Nice pics, you are clearly not as technology challenged as I am.

Slade01

Very nice photos of some superb coins.
I find that TV tends to wash out colors on copper coins frequently, but they do pretty well overall with brilliant silver and nickel coins, just not as much so with the toned and circulated stuff.

epc

Nice pics and nice coins!

Shurke

Great shots!

I notice the TrueViews tend to bring out a brighter gold color than your shots (maybe Phil just used more lights?) And that makes me curious—color wise, which pics would you say are more accurate?

OAKSTAR

Nothing wrong with that! 👍 👍 I can smell that gold from here! 👍

FlyingAl

Not a bad start at all Dan! I have a few more tricks of the trade to teach, but for now that will certainly do.

WaterSport

Great looking pics, now try some proofs ....They will humble you. Lol

WS

The_Dinosaur_Man

Good work!

FlyingAl

@WaterSport said:
Great looking pics, now try some proofs ....They will humble you. Lol

WS

IMO - the hardest coins to image are originally toned early gold. The colors are super tough to get right.

If you do it right, Proofs can be easy.

emeraldATV

Very impressive for a rookie. Lol.
Great job. Really. Now you slide show your photo's instead of pulling a coin.
Here's the one factor to keep in mind.
Do they match in color, contrast, tint or any thing else not mentioned here, as in hand.
There will come a time when it is what it is.
Good better best, never let it rest, until your good is better and your better is best.
"With great abilities comes great responsibilities."
Also any copy shop can reproduce on any stock with the most up to date copier's dpi value if needed to frame or reference.
Cool

johnny010

Best experience yet. Nice work Dan.

jom

Excellent start. Since I don't think anyone's mentioned it but from what I see there seems to be a "reddish" tint to the photos. Maybe try some different lighting.

Best of luck!

jom

Mr_Spud

Very nice 👍🏼

crazyhounddog

Excellent work👍😎

golden

Very, very nice job!

joeykoins

Awesome Pics, dude plus coins!

airplanenut

When I see Kellogg and hear that these are just your first images, I'd say...

DCW

Nice shots. You are at least as good as our host's true view team already

cheezhed

Thanks for sharing your coins and images. Both are fantastic.

lkenefic

Wow! THAT is your first time out?!! I'm humbled...

...maybe it's the subject matter? Awesome coins BTW...

PeakRarities

@Shurke said:
Great shots!

I notice the TrueViews tend to bring out a brighter gold color than your shots (maybe Phil just used more lights?) And that makes me curious—color wise, which pics would you say are more accurate?

Ok, so I think its a bit of both. I could see how brighter lights might bring out a more intense gold color, but I will also say that many TV's have too much of a yellow shift in my opinion. My photos actually had a bit too much of a red shift, I have since made some adjustments to the white balance and updated the op. Now, I would say that mine are definitely more accurate. I spent a lot of time on them, even holding the coin next to the photo on my laptop to make sure I was very close. Unfortunately, the TV team doesn't have the luxury of spending much time when they shoot the coins.

PeakRarities

@jom said:
Excellent start. Since I don't think anyone's mentioned it but from what I see there seems to be a "reddish" tint to the photos. Maybe try some different lighting.

Best of luck!

jom

Thanks for the feedback, I noticed that too and have adjusted the balance to take out the red tint. Wih that said, the 1799 has a heavy red undertone in hand. The new photos are more accurate now.

Coinbert

You are off to a great start Dan. Looking forward to seeing more photos.

Connecticoin

Those look great! With trueviews being so deplorable lately, it is good to be able to do DIY photos that look better.

How easy is the photo cropping in Photoshop? I use the free Photoscape and do ok but it is somewhat tedious and requires a steady hand to get acceptable precision.

PeakRarities

@Connecticoin said:
Those look great! With trueviews being so deplorable lately, it is good to be able to do DIY photos that look better.

How easy is the photo cropping in Photoshop? I use the free Photoscape and do ok but it is somewhat tedious and requires a steady hand to get acceptable precision.

Very easy, you use an elliptical marquee and you just drag 4 points to the perimeter of the coin and it makes a perfect circle.

Fraz

Nice.

Seraph21

Wow, those look amazing. I'm just starting to dip my toes in coin photography. Do you have any info you can share about how you're lighting your setup. I've tried using a pane of glass for axial lighting, but I keep getting this haze from the light itself on the glass.

PeakRarities

@Seraph21 said:
Wow, those look amazing. I'm just starting to dip my toes in coin photography. Do you have any info you can share about how you're lighting your setup. I've tried using a pane of glass for axial lighting, but I keep getting this haze from the light itself on the glass.

Im just using 3 adjustable desk lamps with 40-60w equivalent diffused led bulbs in the 3000k range. I play around with the positioning but I still have much improvement to make with my lighting. Theres other members are more qualified to give advice if they care to chime in.

Elcontador

The human eye sees 14 different f stops, while the best cameras will see 9, maybe 10. I never could get the fall colors' yellow gold tones in New England quite right. Imagine editing software can fix that. Like any hobby, it depends on how much time you want to put into it.

Seraph21

@DeplorableDan said:

@Seraph21 said:
Wow, those look amazing. I'm just starting to dip my toes in coin photography. Do you have any info you can share about how you're lighting your setup. I've tried using a pane of glass for axial lighting, but I keep getting this haze from the light itself on the glass.

Im just using 3 adjustable desk lamps with 40-60w equivalent diffused led bulbs in the 3000k range. I play around with the positioning but I still have much improvement to make with my lighting. Theres other members are more qualified to give advice if they care to chime in.

wow, 3 40-60w lamps, I'm def not using enough light then.

shortnock

Mightyfine photos! Grasshopper! You have learned well! Kudos to you and FlyingAl.

ElmerFusterpuck

@Connecticoin said:
Those look great! With trueviews being so deplorable lately, it is good to be able to do DIY photos that look better.

How easy is the photo cropping in Photoshop? I use the free Photoscape and do ok but it is somewhat tedious and requires a steady hand to get acceptable precision.

For those that don't have Photoshop or something else, here's a free site that does a wonderful job of circle cropping for me:

https://crop-circle.imageonline.co/

PeakRarities

@ElmerFusterpuck said:

@Connecticoin said:
Those look great! With trueviews being so deplorable lately, it is good to be able to do DIY photos that look better.

How easy is the photo cropping in Photoshop? I use the free Photoscape and do ok but it is somewhat tedious and requires a steady hand to get acceptable precision.

For those that don't have Photoshop or something else, here's a free site that does a wonderful job of circle cropping for me:

https://crop-circle.imageonline.co/

Yea, that's pretty easy too. Worked well for me.

Coinscratch

They look good enough to see the bite marks

Great info here that I'll be tooling around with later time permitting.

jom

@DeplorableDan said:

@jom said:
Excellent start. Since I don't think anyone's mentioned it but from what I see there seems to be a "reddish" tint to the photos. Maybe try some different lighting.

Best of luck!

jom

Thanks for the feedback, I noticed that too and have adjusted the balance to take out the red tint. Wih that said, the 1799 has a heavy red undertone in hand. The new photos are more accurate now.

Believe it or not it wasn't the coin I looked at to see the red tint. It was the slab plastic. On my monitor (monitors often differ) the plastic has the reddish tint to it. Adjusting the balance is one way. However, I've found that using different lighting helps more. JMO.

Good luck!

jom

rmpsrpms

@DeplorableDan said:
2. High relief saint

TV- Phils got me on this one, he's able to show the depth real well with the high reliefs.

The extra depth shown in the TV is due to Phil/PCGS being able to bring the lights higher without glare than you can once the coin is slabbed. I don't see any glare at all on the slab so for sure you can bring the lights up higher, as long as you keep the glare outside the radius of the coin. You can do even better by "shaping" the light source by masking the parts that create glare first. I've found an optimum is to mask nearly 50% of the source. This allows you to bring the light closer to lens/coin while eliminating glare from 50% of the light. The other 50% is also brought closer, so the entire source (a half-circle) is at a higher angle and is closer to axial, thus improving shadowing on the edges of the features and thus depth perception.

This will give you a better image of the coin, but there will be glare on the other parts of the slab. This is fine if you are just doing the coin as you can circle-crop it and place it on whatever background you like. But if you want a pic of the whole slab, you can first take a pic with the lights farther away as you have above, then place a circle-cropped, higher quality image of the coin in place of the full-slab image. This will give a TV-like image in a full slab, sort of a glamor shot. Several folks on the forum do this regularly.

breakdown

I missed this thread earlier. Your photos look good to me. But more important for you to pay attention to feedback from those who know how to photograph. Airplanenut and Crazyhoundog are both good at coin images.

Others you may want to peruse at some point:

Todd Pollock is excellent - he's on here.

Mike Prinz at Harlan Berk takes great photos that have a bit of a unique look to them.

PeakRarities

@rmpsrpms said:

@DeplorableDan said:
2. High relief saint

TV- Phils got me on this one, he's able to show the depth real well with the high reliefs.

The extra depth shown in the TV is due to Phil/PCGS being able to bring the lights higher without glare than you can once the coin is slabbed. I don't see any glare at all on the slab so for sure you can bring the lights up higher, as long as you keep the glare outside the radius of the coin. You can do even better by "shaping" the light source by masking the parts that create glare first. I've found an optimum is to mask nearly 50% of the source. This allows you to bring the light closer to lens/coin while eliminating glare from 50% of the light. The other 50% is also brought closer, so the entire source (a half-circle) is at a higher angle and is closer to axial, thus improving shadowing on the edges of the features and thus depth perception.

This will give you a better image of the coin, but there will be glare on the other parts of the slab. This is fine if you are just doing the coin as you can circle-crop it and place it on whatever background you like. But if you want a pic of the whole slab, you can first take a pic with the lights farther away as you have above, then place a circle-cropped, higher quality image of the coin in place of the full-slab image. This will give a TV-like image in a full slab, sort of a glamor shot. Several folks on the forum do this regularly.

This is very helpful, thank you Ray 🙏