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Nice colorful bicentennial JFK from a roll

nwcsnwcs Posts: 13,386 ✭✭✭
Figuring out how to capture color on coins using my digital camera... May not be MS, but it certainly acquired an interesting color in the vault at First Tennessee bank. (I have a friend who works there who called in all their halves from their branches for me!)

Capturing color is quite easy. What you want to do is have the light source directly on top of the coin. You want the reflection of the light to hit the camera lens dead on. Then you want to set the light source to bulb and not auto. Auto rarely works. Although I didn't do it here, using a white background always helps. It balances the color. Reveal bulbs work well, but the bulb setting compensates for the yellow in tungsten bulbs. When you open the pic in your favorite pic editor, set the white, black, and gray points. It corrects most of the color distortion in pics. The Ricoh rdc4300 (which I use) has a bias towards allowing a little too much red into the pic. Adding a little cyan or desaturating the red can compensate, or by setting the white/gray/black points.

Neil

Comments

  • Relly good job on the color. Thanks for the tips. I just got a digital camera and can't wait to try your techniques.
    Buy the coin...but be sure to pay for it.

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