Axial Lighting is like magic for coin photography
Seraph21
Posts: 78 ✭✭✭
Hi everyone, If anyone's read my prior posts, this is mainly a continuation. I've gotten quite into coin photography as much as I have with collecting. I've been trying out new some new techniques when I have some spare time to do so. I recently started experimenting with axial lighting. It's a interesting technique where you directly light the subject using some sort of reflection so that the subject and object are lit perpendicular to the camera lens.
However I have found this to be VERY difficult to achieve in practice. You need an incredibly bright light. With every medium I've used to create the light reflection, there would be this bright white glare either in the center or off to the corner washing out large portions of the image. If any of you coin photographers out there have figured it out, please let me know what I'm doing wrong.
Also, while axial lighting creates beautiful images of toned coins, I feel like there's a bit deceptive if used by auction houses for toned coins, as in hand, a coin will never look like that since the human eye doesn't produce light. It will make a coin look much more colorful. (case in point, my 1798/7 NGC AU55 that I won at heritage a while back)
Anyways here's some comparison photos that I've taken. No edits to saturation were made, only exposure and white balance.
Here's the 1798/8 from my prior attempts here: https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/1104000/whats-everyones-opinion-on-why-this-didnt-cross-to-pcgs/p1
With overhead, the coin looks very much like this in hand:
However, with axial, you can see the spectacular colors of the (probably artificial) toning on this coin:
Here's another coin in my collection that I actually love, but wish there was just a little more detail in liberty's head:
With axial lighting:
Here's Phil's Great Photo from the GC auction, most likely with overhead lighting:
And the not so great photo from PCGS:
In hand, I would say the coin looks somewhere between my photo and the gc photo.
Thanks for reading, and if you have tips please let me know!
PS. they're high res photos, you can right click and open in new tab to see the full res images.
Comments
Axial is a pain in the butt for me.
My most recent axial shots:
NGC Slabs sometimes create a prismatic or rainbow glare which is tough to deal with. Otherwise, no problem with a lot of trial and error and practice.
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Those are some great shots! @FlyingAl how are you avoiding the glare in your images? @The_Dinosaur_Man I notice that your images have a slight white haze on your photos which I imagine is the glare from the reflection either from the glass or from the slab.
At this point, luck.
Have you shot any Proofs yet? I'd be interested to see how they turned out with your process.
I have not yet, I'll try to image some this weekend and let you know the results.
I agree with the luck part of the lighting, those 2 images took me over an hour of fussing with the light, but I was able to take a few more photos before I accidently bumped into the arm that that light was mounted on.
Glad you admitted it, Flying
Al.
Now I know I will never be able to duplicate your skills.
I never liked shooting axially. I've done it many times and for some larger, more well-known dealers, but the effort to produce the right image was just over the top. Proof coinage is what I used it for mostly, but it was tough.
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
Ok, gotcha. I've gotten it down to 20 seconds or so per side for most coins I end up shooting. Slab glare is the major issue - shooting raw axially is easy.
Taking the images wasn't too difficult, but the light adjustment was quite annoying. I only have slabbed coins as my subjects.
Axially = actually = 🤣
"Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill"
It's trivial for raw coins, but the coins that warrant it are seldom raw, making it a pain to do, especially at a show. I therefore seldom use this. You might occasionally see me pull out a piece of paper with a hole in it, cram it onto the end of my lens, and point the lights up. Sometimes it works well, but it's more a soft ring light than axial lighting.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
@Seraph21 that would be the slab. I usually aim directly for the natural in-hand look and hold back on over-processing in post. Back when I worked on the website for a LCS (and soon for my own site), I chose to show that in-hand look so the buying clientele could really see what they were getting. If a PCGS Trueview was available, I would add that into the listing as well.
Custom album maker and numismatic photographer.
Need a personalized album made? Design it on the website below and I'll build it for you.
https://www.donahuenumismatics.com/.
@The_Dinosaur_Man got it, I appreciate sellers that try to give the most natural in hand look photos as possible. It makes it easier for me since there's no coin shows or coin shops around me. Crazy that the slab make such a difference here.
@FlyingAl Here's a almost un-edited photo of my proof 10c that I was going to post on your other thread about 1898 proofs when I got around to taking the focus stack (haven't got around to that yet). The only edit I did here was fix white balance and adjust the exposure down a little.
I can't seem to get that wonderfully soft lighting that you have on yours, but I do quite like my shot too.
Ah, gotcha. Nice shot, but I wouldn't necessarily call it axial. You have a very small portion of the fields actually lit, which means that your light is off of the angle you need to a true axial shot.
Here's a similar shot (completely raw though) where the light is similarly offset. When you bring the light on line, you get the glare that @TomB, @The_Dinosaur_Man, @messydesk and I are all mentioning.
@FlyingAl correct, It's not true axial, my light is offset ~15 deg. That's why I asked in my first post how to avoid that glare
Ah, I understand now. It seemed like you had it figured out from the first post, and I was gonna be very impressed!
It seems like everyone is putting bandaids of sorts onto the glare issue - there's not much you can do. You have to take a trade off of getting the right amount of detail and texture while trading color depth from what I've seen. Very very hard to do. Remove the slab and it's much easier:
The main issue I have with axial lighting is the degradation of image quality as the light has to pass through the 45-deg glass. To avoid this, I developed a technique a decade ago I call "smile directors" that gives near-axial lighting results while avoiding the glare. You can do a Google search to pull up my old posts, mostly on CCF. This technique works on both raw and slabbed coins.
For raw coins, I've since done more work with both full ringlights for proofs, and masked ringlights for business strikes, arranged to achieve "pseudo-axial" lighting. This technique eliminates the need for 45-deg glass while giving near-axial (within a couple degrees) lighting. This is primarily used on raw coins to get maximum resolution while giving the deep color presentation of "true" axial lighting.
http://macrocoins.com
@rmpsrpms I've seen some of your posts on CCF a while back, and have seen your site with the systems. Very cool.
@FlyingAl Ya, that's somewhat annoying. I see even in your raw coin shot that there's a slight offset that you can see that the bottom left has more light than the upper area.
On the CCF site, a user posted a few years back on a 3d printed cage that looked pretty interesting. I'm having trouble googling where I can buy a small half mirror, looking for 2 way mirrors always shows huge ones that are like 6+ inches, I would want one that's roughtly 2-3 inches. Does anyone have an idea?
Great thread, @Seraph21.
@FlyingAl Here's some with aligned diffused light. The light loss is intense. You can clearly see the haze I'm talking about.
Do you have any tips on how to edit this out? My photoshop editing skills for lighting & color are still pretty rudimentary. (I usually shoot in raw)
Bright white coin:
Lightly toned proof:
With bright white coins, the haze is less of an issue, but it does create a severe wash out if there's any color.
That “haze” in your above photos looks like it could fixed—or at least improved—by playing around with the levels.
This gives you an idea of how bad that haze is.
This is the best I could do:
That's a really good edit on a jpg.
Here's a try with 2 lights directed at the center point of the reflector:
(these are 2 different coins)
And I 3d printed a small pyramid to test for lighting evenness, the white spots at the corners of the image is the glare cast.
What does everyone think, how do you think it compares to a true axial shot?
Out of curiosity, I tried with the 2006-S Dime as well. To get this result, I ran it back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop.
@Seraph21 you should try your hand doing axial lighting on reverse proofs. It's a good bit of fun.
Custom album maker and numismatic photographer.
Need a personalized album made? Design it on the website below and I'll build it for you.
https://www.donahuenumismatics.com/.
I do happen to have one on hand, took this one using the technique above:
And direct axial with the glare...
@The_Dinosaur_Man
I'll have to try axial with some of my reverse Proofs. I have a 2018 set in OGP I can crack open to get at em raw.
The haze looks like flare from the lights bouncing back into the lens.
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@yspsales that's exactly what i think it is too. it's the light reflected from the glass since the glass i have is 50R/50T
A helpful video.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xgb0RR41shM&ab_channel=BioCommunicationsAssociation
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," --- Benjamin Franklin
I have watched that video a bunch of times actually
Thanks, saved me from asking what axial photo was.
Rather than a projector, what is the best light source and 2 way mirror for axial photography? If already posted, I missed it, as all I saw was a real bright light. I've never been able to photograph toned proof coins and thought I might play around with it.
Thanks.
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
If you're shooting raw and the light is flat, you should be able to adjust the levels fairly easily as long as you're editing using 16 bits per channel and not 8.
Using the same lighting, shoot a reference picture of a white balance target. Open the images of the target and your identically lit coins in the Camera Raw editor. Calibrate the white balance of the target, then synchronize the white balance across all images with the calibrated target.
Next, open in Photoshop as 16-bit images and then go to the levels tool. You'll see a narrow histogram, which means low contrast.
Drag the black and white points of the levels tool to the ends of the histogram. The resulting image should be about right.
The color checker image below has a blue cast because the white balance was off in the original. I further adjusted each channel (red, green, blue) in the levels tool in the same manner, effectively knocking the blue down a bit and got this. The wide histogram now shows you have a high contrast image. The holes in the histogram are a result of my editing the 8-bit JPEG I grabbed above. Visually, those holes represent banding of the color that you see in the JPEG artifacts. You would not see any of this if you do your editing in 16-bit raw.
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Great tip @messydesk.
I think partially my issue is I'm using a cube beamsplitter and the internal reflection of the light source on the top surface is being projected as glare/haze (akin to what @yspsales suggested). I'm going to see if I can source a plate beamsplitter and try again in a few days.
However while not as colorful as a true axial image for some of the examples in my first post. It seems like a slight offset of the light through the glass still produces quite a good rendition of toning colors while still looking like an in-hand look under a bright light source.
My biggest problem with coin photography and the reason I’ve sort of given up on it is that I don’t ever want to edit/manipulate the image other than size/crop.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," --- Benjamin Franklin
I tried as well. this is all I came up with. not natural but anyway.
If it's because it's more effort than it's worth to you to learn and use post-processing tools, then OK. If it's because you want the image out of the camera to be perfect or it doesn't count, I'll never understand that mentality. Post-processing is just another tool that can be used to get the image you want after it leaves the camera. It's been around for over 100 years in various forms. Need to lighten up part of the print? Wave your hand under the enlarger a bit in that area. Need more contrast? Adjust the chemistry concentration or temperature. Color off? Dial in a gel.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
A couple of shots I just did for a client - a little touch of haze left in the bottom of the images. It's an old PCI holder, so I think that's part of the issue.
Nice!
Here's that same dime from an earlier post, first is SooC, then the second is some camera raw dehaze + bump black levels
Making coins is my specialty, not photographing them. But I do frequently need to photograph them for product listings and the catalog. I bought my camera used, and it is only of moderate quality. Replacing it would probably yield the biggest improvement. But once in a while, due to sheer luck and/or coincidence, a photo will turn out very well. I took this photo the other day and it is one of the best I have taken (although I'm sure a professional photographer could do better). My method is to just move the lights around randomly until I like the image I see:
@dcarr That's a really good picture. I think if you get some brighter lights it might be easier to get sharper images without needing to upgrade your camera yet. For reference I'm using 60W studio leds (not 60W equivalent incandescent). Also can I make a request for a disme for your next design
.
I hear this a lot from folks, and it highlights that they don't understand that the camera is already doing a tremendous amount of internal post-processing to the image. Even if you shoot "raw" the image is highly processed to make it look like it does. When doing post-processing, as long as you have the goal of making the image look as much like the coin does in-hand, then you can't really go wrong.
Edited to add: I just remembered that I made a post a while back showing how to do pseudo-axial lighting by placing a coin at an angle, with a diffuser as light source. This eliminates the ill effects of the half-reflecting glass, and as long as you make the source really even across the whole coin, can be used for shooting slabs. You do need a lot of contrast adjustment to eliminate the glare but as long as it's even the result can be very good. I actually think it was BST post.
http://macrocoins.com
I did a diagram of all the in-camera processing that happens once. It was pretty big if you were shooting raw, huge if you weren't.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Continuing my experiments:
This is a 2 light overhead:
This is a true axial image at 45 degrees:
I used the ACR dehaze to get rid of the glare, the 2 different images are at base exposure, and bumped up 1 stop respectively, no edits to color were made except to fix white balance from the dehaze.
Which one does everyone like more? Glare is still sorta impossible to avoid.
I'm always amazed how many people have a $250+ Photoshop license and know how to use it.
http://ProofCollection.Net
Haha, you're correct that it's $250/yr for photoshop.
Experimenting with raw proof coins, @FlyingAl's right, it's like easy mode. These are almost straight out of camera (just had to pull down the highlights and bring up the shadow a little to my liking, no edits to saturation). First is the usual 10/2 2 light overhead, second is axial for each: