New Photo Setup- Please critique my photos!!!

airplanenut

Howdy,

I just got the start I needed on my next latest and greatest photo setup ever I will explain more about it later, but I combined the ideas behind the Ott lights with my existing desk lamps to create, what I feel, is a great shot. Obviously, I have to work in more lights and spend more time using the setup... the pictures are just a few shots from the first 21 that I just took... scaled down only- no cropping, etc (as you can see ).

My goals were the following:
-Accurately display color and/or luster
-Have the coin as "dead-on" as possible (not angled)
-Have the picture be sharp
-To not have a reflection of a lighting source in the plastic
-Have the audience like what they see

Here are a few shots... please tell me what you think (remember that I'm still toying with it, and I'm tired ) Also, remember that the quality (JPG compression) was killed when I downsized these, as I needed the file sizes to be smaller... when I crop pictures manually, the quality is much better.












Thanks for your input!

Jeremy

uofa1285

Fantastic pics!!!



Watch out Russ! Jeremy will get my consignment biz and spam threads from now on!

Doug

Louis

tsacch

Good start for sure. I agree with the more light comment.

nice job

razorface1027

PERFECTO PICS...especially well done on the toners..

stujoe

They are certainly much better than what I can accomplish. Colors look very good.

The only thing I thought was that they looked a little flat and a tad lifeless except for that last one which is more 'alive' and looks like I am holding it in my hand instead of looking at a picture.

Nitpicking, constructive critisism as I would LOVE to be able to get pictures as good as any of the ones you posted.

moosesr

Those are really nice pictures!!!

Charlie

MacCoin

hi you going to be as good as skylock pretty quick

Barry

Jeremy,
Very nice! I would shoot for (pun intended) more light. They seem a little dark. If EV is 0, try +0.3 or +0.7. Also, double check your white balance. I may be wrong, but I think you are getting a little too much purple.

Goldog63

<< <i>Jeremy,
Very nice! I would shoot for (pun intended) more light. They seem a little dark. If EV is 0, try +0.3 or +0.7. Also, double check your white balance. I may be wrong, but I think you are getting a little too much purple. >>



I agree with Barry, The first couple look red and the later ones look lavender from what I see. Brightening may help although 1 of the requirements is no glare which I'll assume is the reason Jeremy shot them with low light. The contrast is very low on all but the last one. What did you do differently on that one? I think it looks very good.

Glenn

airplanenut

Goldog,

Here was the first shot of the Roanoke:


As you can see, it's a lifeless shot, especially because it's such a lustrous coin. What I did for that one what I actually picked up the back of the slab to produce a cartwheel- since there wasn't much light, the bottom became darker than the more illuminated top...



<< <i>Brightening may help although 1 of the requirements is no glare which I'll assume is the reason Jeremy shot them with low light. >>

That's not why I shot with lower light... the real reason is that I was only using one main lamp- normally I use two... then I had another light angled from the back to help illuminate the whole scene when needed. I didn't use the other light because... it's not ready yet



<< <i>The only thing I thought was that they looked a little flat and a tad lifeless except for that last one which is more 'alive' and looks like I am holding it in my hand instead of looking at a picture. >>

I'm going to try tilting the toners more, too... some, like the jefferson, are terribly picky coins... get off a few degrees, and the coin shows NO color




<< <i>Very nice! I would shoot for (pun intended) more light. They seem a little dark. If EV is 0, try +0.3 or +0.7. Also, double check your white balance. I may be wrong, but I think you are getting a little too much purple. >>

I don't know what EV is (), but I'll look into it Heck, I'm in school and have some free time, so I'll look it up when I finish this post. As for the purple- I'm using Reveal bulbs, which do have a purple/blue hue to them. I should try shooting with White Balance at Sunlight and not incandescent, as Reveal is supposed to look like natural light. I may also try white bulbs... but only based on more Reveal testing, first.

Thanks, all, for your comments... I really do appreciate them. Again, it was late last night when I got to work on this, so that's why there's so little initial experimentation. I'm off school on Friday, so while I'll be working some of the day, it extends my weekend and frees up tomorrow night from school work... I should have more pictures soon

Jeremy

PS- Any more comments? I'd love to hear them

LanLord

Jeremy,

I was going to reply that more light would be a definite plus, but then I thought about my own pathetic coin photo skills and decided to say: Really nice job. The detail and color resolution are really quite nice.

Outhaul

If the low lighting was necessary to capture the true colors then don't mess with it. Beautiful pic!

Cheers,

Bob

airplanenut

<< <i>If the low lighting was necessary to capture the true colors then don't mess with it. Beautiful pic! >>

Thanks, Bob... but the low light shouldn't be the case... more can't hurt.

The low light was a result of me only preparing one of two lights for this setup... I wanted to see how it would start from the getgo, so I chose to go faster and only use one light. Of course, if adding a light doesn't help for color, then I'll go back to one light I still have to do more tests for white coins.

Jeremy

coinpage

Jeremy,

Look great to me. You done a fine job if capturing the detail of the coins. It tough balancing the need for ilumination but not washing out the details of the design.

mgoodm3

Nice pictures. The detail is nice. Sounds like the lighting/color balance is all that could use adjusting. Play with white balance, exposure and bulbs and there should be a good combo out there.

Barry

Jeremy,
Se p. 69 of the 4500 book for info on Exposure Compnesation (EV). I use it all the time, not only for coins. For coins, it's a must when photographing NGC or ANACS slabs because the white around the coins cause underexposure (unless you use spot metering).

airplanenut

Barry,

I've been using spot metering. If you couldn't tell, the 1858 is ANACS, the 1886 is NGC, and the rest different generations of PCGS.

The background pad I use is black, as you can probably also see... would that be adding EV for each, or subtracting for one background?

Jeremy

Barry

Jeremy,
For the coins with the white background, you want a +EV. For coins with a dark background, you want a -EV.

As an example, here's the histogram for the obverse of the 1858 coin. If your not familiar with histograms, it is a representation of pixels in the picture. The X axis is the intensity with black on the left and white on the right (and midrange in the middle). The Y axis is the number of pixels representing each intensity. Most pictures, with few exceptions, should look like a Bell curve, spread across the full range of the graph. Pictures that are too dark, or too bright will be skewed into a narrow range. You can see the narrow range here:



I tried adding dynamic range to the picture with Levels in Photoshop, then eliminating the color cast, caused by the Reveal bulbs. Even so, there just wasn't enough dynamic range (due to low illumination) to do it. I was only able to get the white slab up to gray, but at least the purple is gone.



Does this look anything like the coin?

Goldog63

<< <i>Does this look anything like the coin? >>



It's not my coin but I imagine that's pretty close on the color. I can see how the low light affects the contrast. The histogram is great. Is it only on photoshop?

Barry

Glenn,
Not sure, I would think any decent digital image editing program has the capability to produce a histogram. Also, some cameras themselves have histograms built in, too.