Photography training session on this 1893 toned half

Crazy4Coins

Just killing some time this afternoon and figured I'd mess around with the camera and see if I could improve on taking digital pics of toned coins. My camera is the Olympus C700 model and I haven't really spent enough time developing the talent yet. I've seen a couple camera/light set-ups that forum members have built and posted pics of on the forum, so I came up with a very primitive version to test out the camera.

Post your opinions on the coin, it's grade and the pics

Randy

Gonfunko

Suggestion for better pics: Place the coin on a blue background, like a Whitman album, open the windows, and take the pics near there. No other light is necessary and you should get pretty accurate color. The pics aren't bad, but could be a bit better. The coin looks to have soem interesting toning and probably grades about AU-55.

Barry

Although it's a little trickier to get the toning, the camera should be directly above the coin. The way you have it angled, the coin looks "squashed," being wider than tall. Another option to make it round is use an image editing program that allows you to stretch the image in one direction or another.