Another Toned 57D

rmpsrpms

Trying some new lighting techniques for toned lincolns. I'm trying to balance capturing the true colors with getting some luster to show. What do you think? Too dark? Once I am finally happy with the lighting I'll take pics of the real gems from this roll.

kryptonitecomics

The coin looks nice but the image is way too dark. What's your lighting setup and how many lights are you using? I like the idea of capturing color and luster with a digital camera as scanners tend to allow for nice color shots but rarely highlight the luster present.

rmpsrpms

<< <i>The coin looks nice but the image is way too dark. What's your lighting setup and how many lights are you using? I like the idea of capturing color and luster with a digital camera as scanners tend to allow for nice color shots but rarely highlight the luster present. >>



I'm using a combination of 4 lights:
- EKE ring light with adjustable intensity at 8". This gives overall diffuse lighting, no luster but good color depth
- Two incandescents, about 18" away at 2:00 and 10:00. These illuminate the torso and face well and give a little luster
- A pinpoint "penlight" that I can move around and capture some more luster

I can easily brighten the image with longer exposure or bringing up the intensity of the ring light, but as I do this I get hotspotting/sensor saturation. I tried to keep the brightest areas just dark enough to keep from saturating the camera sensor.

I suppose I could use gamma correction to lighten the dark areas without increasing the exposure on the brighter areas. I'll do that and send the image back out later...

MikeInFL

<< <i>I suppose I could use gamma correction to lighten the dark areas without increasing the exposure on the brighter areas. I'll do that and send the image back out later... >>



I think you would do better to retake the photo.

Trying to play with gamma to capture detail or increase brightness will introduce a lot of noise into the photograph. Very small corrections can be made using gamma, but this photo is underexposed enough that using gamma correction will yeild the ill-effects of signal-to-noise amplification. You would do better to take another shot and be sure to expose it correctly in-camera -- this will virtually always produce a better digital photograph than one that needs significant post-processing.

Here's a recent post you may find helpful on what to look for with your in-camera histogram to get the correct exposure.

Happy Thanksgiving...Mike

p.s. I like the look of the photo, but it is underexosed.

rmpsrpms

<< <i>

<< <i>I suppose I could use gamma correction to lighten the dark areas without increasing the exposure on the brighter areas. I'll do that and send the image back out later... >>



I think you would do better to retake the photo.

Trying to play with gamma to capture detail or increase brightness will introduce a lot of noise into the photograph. Very small corrections can be made using gamma, but this photo is underexposed enough that using gamma correction will yeild the ill-effects of signal-to-noise amplification. You would do better to take another shot and be sure to expose it correctly in-camera -- this will virtually always produce a better digital photograph than one that needs significant post-processing.

Here's a recent post you may find helpful on what to look for with your in-camera histogram to get the correct exposure.

Happy Thanksgiving...Mike

p.s. I like the look of the photo, but it is underexosed. >>



Thanks for the pointers Mike. I was playing around with the histograms and had a qualitative feel but the thread and links you referenced show that I need to concentrate a lot more on this to get it right. The comparative histograms for the excellent photos are really helpful in understanding what's going on. I'll try again and repost the results.

pharmer

Sweet toned wheatHistagram equalization attempts to allocate ranges of the color ramp proportional to the image area ocupied by various pixel value ranges so that more colors are allocated to the pixel ranges that most need it, and only few colors are allocated for those rare pixel values.

rmpsrpms

OK, I took the photos again. This time I set up the lighting and exposure so that the histogram has its peak near the center, with a few saturated pixels and a few dark pixels. I also created a randomized background that has a centered and relatively gaussian distribution. It looks pretty good to me, what do you think?

MikeInFL

Getting better.

rmpsrpms

Trying to upload the raw obverse picture

rmpsrpms

OK, here's my latest try. A little darker. Compare the last photo with this one. I removed a 0.5x lens, which moved me much closer to the coin. The ring light now shines at more of an angle. In the last photos the ring light was higher, so the light was more vertical, which highlighted the surfaces more. Comments welcome and appreciated!

pharmer

Very nice! The toning is beautiful!