Ideas for photographing coins/medals.

Rombalds

These are a few things I have learned. I would welcome more advice from any experts out there.

I always use a plain background of a color that will compliment the medal, usually a pretty blue.

For focussing, I experimented with using no macro, macro and super-macro. I found that generally the latter produced the best results though it excludes the option to use built-in flash. Camera shake can also be aproblem if not using a tripod. Obviously to photograph any edge marks, signatures etc., there is no real alternative to a high calibre macro.

For lighting, I experimented with ambient light, spotlights, flash and angled flash. In generall, the ambient light produced the best results though the phrase “ambient light” can, of course, mean a whole range of conditions. I do not have a flash unit separate from the camera. Direct camera flash was hopeless (too much reflection) and angled flash distorts the circular nature of the medal.

Interestingly, the flash results seemed to produce a more faithful result as far as the colour was concerned. Both the ambient light and the spotlight versions made the bronze of the medal very yellow and Photoshop did not improve it much. Next time I shall try making sure that the “ambient light” is primarily sunlight/daylight rather than electric light.

Any comments?

coinpictures

<< <i>I always use a plain background of a color that will compliment the medal, usually a pretty blue. >>



I would never use a background (for shooting) other than black, white, or gray. Using an actual colored background will play games with the color of the coin itself.

Instead, once the image is sized and cropped, mask the background to the color of your choice.

The following are all the same images, just a different background color dropped in. Very different effects, depending on the contrast with the coin itself...

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theboz11

Mark Goodman is a member and his writtings have helped many a collector photographer here. See if any of his thinking will help. I always shoot black background, and generally leave it black. It gives a constant when in a display album

rgCoinGuy

The responses so far are great.

To add to them, I would recommend for lighting, 3 flexible desk lamps, with GE Reveal bulbs (inexpensive) as a cheap way to get great lighting.

Once you have your white, grey, or black ( I never use black as a background, but from the above post assume it would be OK), turn on your lights, focus on the background, and set your white balance.

I use macro on my old Nikkon CoolPix camera for all shots.

Here are a couple examples...


















You can search on the US coin forum for photo or photography and such and find all kinds of good advice and setups.

Daltonista

And if all you're doing is grabbing quick shots for eBay postings, you can keep it pretty simple, too. For example, here's my rig, along with a couple of examples I shot last weekend.
You can see I used a VERY low-tech tripod and a kitchen counter. The only lighting was the fluorescent stuff mounted under the cabinets above the counter.

BCNumismatics

You can download a FREE photo editor from here.That will help you with cropping off the excess,& combining 2 photos into one.

I can personally recommend it.

Aidan.

IloiloKano

One problem I've found using backgrounds of any type or color, especially when using macro mode, is that no material I've found is uniform in either color or lighting, and it is difficult to create an image where reeded edges are clearly shown, when manipulating the background to make it uniform.

To help solve this problem, I've used a home made stand, so that the coin face is in focus, but the background is not. It is then quite easy using Photoshop to keep the same overall look of the coin, while creating a uniform background.

I do this by manipulating both input and output levels. Typically, I change the low end of both from 0 to either 48 or 64, which keeps all aspects of the picture of the coin the same, but turns everything else to either a uniform 48 or 64 gray level. The background can then be exclusively selected with the magic wand tool, and the selection can be feathered by 2, 4 or 8 pixels (depending on the total picture size), and finally the selected background can be set to pure black, or blue, or whatever color you choose.

Here is a picture of my home made stand, on which I perch the coin to be photographed.



I hope this helps others in their quest for the perfect coin photography setup.