coin photography: ngc slabs, no maual f-stop on camera-what to do?

1907Quarter

help! My shots are dim thanks to the auto setting/white background-do you mask the slab, and with what?

KlectorKid

Turn of the auto white setting. Then take the picture crop the coin and change the white balance in a photo program.

mgoodm3

Sounds like an exposure prob, not a WB problem. Camera will use all that white to figure out the exposure to use and thus your coin will underexpose. I don't know what exposure setting you've got but if you change the exposure/metering to spot or center-weighted, it will help. Also if you have exposure compensation (+/- eV) you can over expose the image a bit to get the coin better exposed (+eV).

1907Quarter

he's done it again! Thanks Mark! exp+/- is in the shooting mode of my Nikon-I guess this is a form of manual f-stop?

mgoodm3

Not really a form of fstop, but tells the camera to use a combo of Fstop and shutter speed that will over-expose the picture a bit. It will be measured in Fstops, typically between -2 and +2 or so.

1907Quarter

I gather this will help?

mgoodm3

Should. Try +0.3 first and keep ratcheting it up until the coin shows up better. Probably 0.7 or 1.0 will work.

1907Quarter

cool!