Photo Help

How about rotating the coin to determine the best angle to view the surface color and then try and replicate the angle under the camera? You can then use software, like Photoshop, to adjust the "roundness" back to normal.

Diffusion may help. It would certainly give a different look.

Halogens are tough to diffuse though.

I like halogen lights. They produce great images.

I quit using them because they just get so hot and are hard to work with.



If I was going to shoot with halogens I would keep some Jansjo led's as backups for coins like this.

Nikor T/S Lens





Buy the lens in the attached, read Goodman's section on what they can do - essentially you can tilt the coin strongly toward the light and then with the T/S lens bring it into focus. Brings out the color and luster.



Best, SH

Send it to Phil.



-Paul

Or Todd

What you want is going to be difficult but not impossible, if you're okay with small compromises.



Axial lighting is what you need (as illustrated by drwstr123) but the problem is the slab will reflect so much light the photo will be very washed out. If you use diffusion (tissue paper, e.g.) to correct light and dark spots on the image, and then post-process with lots of contrast you can overcome a lot of this.



An alternative to axial lighting is to tilt the slab and move the halogen light until you get similar direct lighting to the lens. That is what I did below for a customer who wanted a shot revealing all the color. Again, diffuse and post-process with contrast. Of course you're going to have focus issues because of the slab tilt. So raise the aperture very high to get the best possible depth of field.



Were the coin raw you wouldn't have to dance around like this. The slab is very limiting.

Lance.