I hate proof coinage

mbbiker

I can take decent pictures of circ strike stuff but i can't get a decent picture of a PF coin WHY!?!?! please look at the pictures below and help me figure out what i can do to improve my PF photography. (ursabearhow did you get your pictures of the ASE?)

baccaruda

looks pretty good to me. you can start by cropping it as close as possible.

FC57Coins

Those aren't bad pics Brad. You might try throwing some more light on the coin and play with the angles. You can also lighten up the picture with Microsoft Paint until the color matches the color of the coin.

Frank


Edited with apologies

RKKay

Brad, if my pictures were as good as yours, I'd be posting them all day. Those are great.

BSqr

those pics look pretty good

SemperFI

What I do when I try to make images of proof coins is that I fold up a piece of paper and put it under part of the holder to lift it up on an angle to reflect some more light onto the frost. Just work with it see what you get.

ursabear

Lighting is critical, and so is angle. I also have a few other small things that help quite a bit.
My camera doesn't do macro (like the gem that Russ and some of the others have), so my shots have to be at least two feet away.
I put my coins on a piece of nice white paper on a low table, then I set up my tripod to put my camera lens about 2 - 2.5 feet from the coin.
The camera is not quite right over the coin. It's kind of at a 10-15 degree (off perpendicular) angle out in front of the lens. This usually downplays some of the things that cameras exaggerate when shot at a perfect perpendicular. Even a great 69 or 70 will show ghosts and false smears on close-up at perpendicular.
Your camera has a much better focus than mine, lots of sharpness, so the angle will help.
I also use a nice 150W Reveal bulb on a regular room lamp on the table (it's the table between our chairs anyway).
Then I put a small, stretchy clamp lamp on the table and put it about 8 inches from the coin, but barely at horizontal to the coin. The lamp is usually about 8 inches above the table, but pointed sideways at the coin. You really have to experiment with this particular light. It truly gives off the frost definition, and sets up the difference of the mirrors and the devices.
I also take a black piece of construction paper and hold it directlly over the coin, just above the camera. This blacks out the fields and turns down the chattering echoes of the letters and devices. This black piece of paper seems critical if you want to make the fields inky. I experiment with the angle and closeness of this piece of paper.
The last thing I do is set the camera to take the picture after delay. That way it doesn't interfere with the focus when I press the button, and my mug or fingers don't get in the shot.

Now that I've gotten used to doing it this way, I can usually set up the whole thing very quickly and easily. The fun part is taking a few different shots with different paper/light angles to see the effects. Sometimes even leaving a little of the fields unreflected of the black paper to show contrast.

If I can get my drawing stuff out, I'll draw a picture of the setup, if anyone would find that interesting.

This is fun stuff. It is almost as much fun as taking the coins out and looking at them.

mbbiker

WOW thanks for the description i'll have to try that tommorow and put up the new pics. the camera i'm using is a Canon G2 and yes it does have a macro feature on the camera as well as a macro lens that i can add so the camera is about 6 inches away from the coin.

DanC

Number of light sources also play a role.

With 3, you can vary the light striking the mirrors, to showcase the blackness of them - and some oblique lighting will assist with the devices.

With proof coins, scans just don't get the job done alot of the time.

edit: afterthought...
Also, some prefer colored backgrounds, but a black background will force the camera to focus on the white devices when in a macro mode. It seems to help quite a bit.

Three light sources:

ursabear

Nice pictures, Dan! Kennedy's hair comes alive like that.

DanC

Thanks Ursa
I'm still learning, and have a ways to go.

You did a bang-up job on that 2001 you had up on ebay though. Great work!