Opinions on the image of this Morgan?

K6AZ

We've had many threads here in relationship to coin photography and the best light source to use. Regular house bulbs cause yellow tinting, Reveals cause red/pinkish tinting, and flourescent lights cause blue tinting. Some people have gone to expensive quartz halogen studio lighting.

I interested in comments as to the color of this Morgan. I realize it is a weak strike and has some light toning here and there (especially around the ear). Also I'm sure I can get my lighting angle in a better spot. What I'd really like to know is what you think of the color reproduction.

mgoodm3

Looks like a good white balance to me.

dwssws

colorwise it looks natural to me (i mean the shadings). nice clear sharp wish i could take pics like that maybe when my new dc arrives

airplanenut

The color looks pretty good to me--I think it would be benefitted by some more light/a different angle as you suggested... that simply because it almost looks like there's not enough contrast between the shadows and the bands of lustre.

That said, kitty is giving me a mean glare

wam98

Nice photo, very bright, maybe too bright. Coin actually looks hot.

tsacch

Nice focus and great detail..........kinda on the dark side a tad though.

K6AZ

Hmm, how can this be? One poster says it's too bright, one says it's too dark. Somebody needs to calibrate their monitor!

I'm using new lighting, so it will take some practice to find the right angle with this particular lighting.

CarlWohlforth

The details look good. The color balance is probably good. It is hard to get bright Morgans to show the "white" silver color they look in hand. I'll bet that Morgan looks "white" when held in a room lit with bright natural light. I get loads of photos like yours from bright coins that reflect lots of light. I suspect that coin is not dark gray, almost black in spots, in color...

Barry

Exposure is good. There is a very slight red cast. Honestly I can't see it, but when opening up the pic in Photoshop, and clicking on various points of the coin with the eyedropper tool, you'll see about 10 points more of Red, than Green or Blue

grip

Heck I cant take a picture that good,but think Airplanenut is right,

wam98

Reset my monitor and it looks better now. When I first looked at the coin it hurt my eyes. Had to back away to look at the image. The color I see is some toning around the ear and some darker areas of silver.

K6AZ

<< <i>The details look good. The color balance is probably good. It is hard to get bright Morgans to show the "white" silver color they look in hand. I'll bet that Morgan looks "white" when held in a room lit with bright natural light. I get loads of photos like yours from bright coins that reflect lots of light. I suspect that coin is not dark gray, almost black in spots, in color... >>



That's the brightness/contrast issue which changes with different lighting. I'll be working on that later. What I'm trying to get to here is that there is no light source tinting that other lighting produces.

K6AZ

<< <i>Exposure is good. There is a very slight red cast. Honestly I can't see it, but when opening up the pic in Photoshop, and clicking on various points of the coin with the eyedropper tool, you'll see about 10 points more of Red, than Green or Blue >>



Barry, the only light source that will provide perfect color balance is natural sunlight. And these light are as close as you can come, you admit you can't see any tints with your own eyes.

K6AZ

Another image taken after making some adjustments:

BAJJERFAN

I was gonna echo Carl's observation about the dark grey look to the coin in the pic. I wonder what Debbie Estes does to get the great pix they have on their site. Too bad they don't have any nice rainbow toners to display her skills with. Legend has nice pix too, but the surfaces are a bit too matte looking to suit me.

mgoodm3

Getting whiter.

K6AZ

<< <i>Getting whiter. >>



I'll have two days to play with getting white coins white. After doing some of my own color probe tests, I've come to the conclusion I was right about these lights. By the way, they are quartz halogens.

wam98

I like the second one better, but what do you think ?

BAJJERFAN

The first image has just the slightest hint of red or pink; the second is better but leans ever so slightly to a yellow tint of sorts; not sure its yellow but its NOT white.

mgoodm3

You do the 100W?

K6AZ

Nope, didn't buy these from a photography store. I got the spec sheets from GE and Sylvania on several of their bulb types. It will blow you away when you see what these are, and they're not labeled as quartz halogen lights.

mgoodm3

My old lamps were nice and cheap and halogen, much like these from office max for $17.99, just not as bright as the SUPER NUCLEAR lights I have now.

K6AZ

Those desk lamps are halogen, but not quartz halogen and are only 20w, at least the ones I've seen around here are only 20w.

mgoodm3

Those are actually 40W. I bet those would make nice coin pic lamps. My old ones were the 20's, which are pretty white, but not as white as my new ones. You got some other source of lamps, you running car headlamps or something?

K6AZ

Here they are:



You can buy these either in the small PAR20 size at 50w or the larger PAR30 size at 75w. I'm running two PAR30 75w bulbs in the rear, and two PAR20 50w bulbs in the front for a total of 250w, and yeah, I know about bright. I've had to increase both the shutter speed and the aperature because they are so bright.

On the retail package they only say halogen, but they are clearly quartz halogens according to the spec sheet. The beauty of these bulbs is that they will fit into Testrite equipment which many of us already have. Both types cost about $9 per bulb.

mgoodm3

Looks like a nice cheap way to get bright white light. Plus you don't have to heat the room you're in while shooting.

K6AZ

These are the same lights as the Kaiser lights use, only smaller wattage and packed in a sealed M base bulb. These four lights do generate some heat, so if anyone tries them be sure to only have them on while you're working with them.

jdsinva

Color looks accurate to me.

K6AZ

I did some further adjusting and got the white coin looking pretty good. Here is the first toned coin with these lights, and yes, the coin really looks like this. The upper half is lime green, the lower half is violet/purple.

RotatedRainbows

The pictures are a little dark with a few darker streaks going thru it, you need to get more light on it. I use two OTT lights covered with regular computer paper wrapped around them, seems to help give a more realistic color and limits the too bright/too dark steaks you commonly encounter. Also works to help bring out true color on toned pieces, it allows everything from the dark colors to the lighter yellows,blues and copper as well as the untoned silver portions to show realistically. The trick is to get the light positioned just right so you do not get the darker spots (shadows) on one portion of the coin. That is why I always use two lights so you can have them shinning from different sides to illuminate the whole coin.

K6AZ

Again, I was looking for the color accuracy. I can tell you are using some sort of light diffusion, which I don't really care for. Seems to me that images using that method look washed out. I rather have a few spots that look underexposed compared to entire images that look washed out.

JRocco

I like the look of that second pic Eric. I find it very hard to see a white Morgan that is dripping with luster, actually look anything like it does to the eye, captured in a digi pic. Your second pic looks great, but I just don't think you can capture the real "look" of a nice coin with a single snapped digital image. Maybe if we could get a camera to take a digi pic a few millimeters to the right, left, top and bottom of the single shot exposure and "blend" them together, then maybe, just maybe, the pic may look like it does to the naked eye with the coin in hand. I just think the eye sees more than just the one snapshot of light that a camera images. Wow -- what a rant.

K6AZ

With digital images, it is always a tradeoff. If you look at the images that rotated rainbows posted, he has traded off luster for color by using diffused light. For me, I want to be able to come up with a balance between color and luster.