Photo experiment comparison images and POLL (actual discussion in last post)
mgoodm3
Posts: 17,497 ✭✭✭
So here are the results of the post-processing experiment. there's quite a variety of output given that there was the same starting point. Personally I like mine the best 
just for yucks, I'm making a poll to see how everybody else views pictures as accurate or not. Which picture do you feel is accurate based on the picture alone? Which one looks the most life-like to you?
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just for yucks, I'm making a poll to see how everybody else views pictures as accurate or not. Which picture do you feel is accurate based on the picture alone? Which one looks the most life-like to you?#1
#2
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coinimaging.com/my photography articles Check out the new macro lens testing section
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Comments
<< <i>I grabbed a couple out of the thread, but monday was kinda a hectic day for me. I probably just forgot that it existed. >>
Sounds like my every day.
<< <i>I like #1 and #8. Whichever one has the most accurate color gets the final nod. >>
8 is nice, but it's too grainy for my tastes.
Since there are some favorites in the voting what makes you like those as opposed to the others?
One of the reasons that I started this whole process is that since we are constantly seeing images of coins, which are viewed as accurate? Most of the time we only have an image to go from and the coin is in some distant safety deposit box. I feel that an image can be deemed "accurate" as an image by looking at the image alone, although it may not always be accurate to the coin.
Personally for me an accurate image is one that looks more like a coin rather than an image of a coin. That may be an unrealistic expectation, but I think that it's valid to a point. Within that "look of realism" there are constraints made upon the amount of image contrast, color saturation, sharpness. Too much or too little of any of these factors and the image will slip away from that ideal.
It all leads to this point. Various people will show images that various people deem "inaccurate". Those people shoot back saying that the coin looks just like the image in hand. My view on all of this is that I have a pretty good idea of what an accurate image is and if that image doesn't fit within the constraints of contrast, sharpness, saturation that exist in real life, I can deem the image "inaccurate" without ever seeing the coin. It looks like an "image of a coin" and not a "coin."
Prove me wrong, flame away.
Image #1 is my pick. But I don't see copper luster on any of these images. What's the deal with that?
<< <i>Mgoodm3 - show us a full image slab and I'll vote.
Image #1 is my pick. But I don't see copper luster on any of these images. What's the deal with that? >>
That's not the point. If I showed several pictures of a horse, one of which is processed appropriately and the others are "juiced" in one way or another, you'd be able to tell which one was accurate. Even if you've never seen this horse before, you still know what a horse should look like. The same thing should be able to be applied to coin imaging. Image accuracy is independent of the thing being photographed, it's either good image or it's not.
One photograph only shows the coin with one angle of light, one level of sharpness, one level of detail, and one exposure. If I ever start selling any coins again I'm going to include several photos with different lighting, different levels of detail, and different levels of sharpness. I believe that photos that are the size of a dinner plate make the coin look bad, while those that are so small that almost no detail shows up makes the coin look better.
Great! Because it is true. It's also true for almost any picture. People don't often appreciate this truth but no camera can replicate what goes on in the human mind. And then you factor in intentional choices such as composition, lighting, lenses used, sensor/film quality, etc. to see that it's more about the photographer's choices than the subject. And anything they wish to do is perfectly acceptable so long as they are honest about it and do not mis-represent what they have done.
The famous example is Ansel Adams. People do not realize that he heavily manipulated his pictures to achieve his goal. His goal was for the image to convey his feelings and impressions more than documenting reality. The same is true for coins. No coin picture documents reality but an impression of reality. Honesty and probably ethics instruct us to tell people whether our pictures are an attempt at scientific level accuracy or how we view the coin (which may not represent reality).
One last note about the images here. I'm a little surprised by just how far some of them are from the original image. I can see why it was done, though. It highlighted an attribute or two that they cared about more than another.
That's very true. He said something to the effect that it took 1/60 of a second to capture a scene and 60 days to turn it into an image. He was speaking about the time in the darkroom. However, Ansel Adams was talking about art and I think coin photography, especially coins for sale, should be about technical accuracy. If the coin is a work of art so be it, but doctoring a photograph to make a plain Jane coin look artistic is wrong - if it is done to deceive.
Didn't wanna get me no trade
Never want to be like papa
Working for the boss every night and day
--"Happy", by the Rolling Stones (1972)