New Diffuser setup - TV-like slab pic

@MsMorrisine said:
great coin photo but don't understand putting separate photos together

Sort of a "best of both worlds" composition. It's impossible to get a good overall picture of the slab simultaneously with the coin since they require different lighting to avoid glare and such.

@FlyingAl said:

@MsMorrisine said:
great coin photo but don't understand putting separate photos together

That’s the industry standard.

Actually, this is probably closer to industry standard:

@ProofCollection said:
Maybe a picture of your photography setup would be helpful to envision what you've done.

@cheezhed said:
Interesting result. I'd like more details.

I described the process on this form perhaps 10 years ago, but it is basically "tilted pseudo-axial" photography. Tilt the coin a bit into the light to reflect off the coin into the camera. This brings out the deep toning colors and gives a bright reflective field to proofs/prooflikes. There are some tricks of course to getting rid of the glare...

@DesertCoin said:
How do you combine the photos? Also interested in such equipment.

I just used Paint.net to combine the photos.

Open the high res coin photo
Circle crop around the coin and copy to clipboard
Open the slab photo
Paste the cropped coin as "new layer" and move it over the coin in the slab and adjust it to size

To get these results, depending on what you are using now, it may be as simple as adding a diffuser to your existing setup.

@skier07 said:
If I’m going to spend a lot of money on a coin with “fancy” pictures there’s a lot to be said about viewing the coin in hand or having good return privileges. I see lots of online images from the same group of dealers and there’s no way the coin looks that way in hand unless it’s imaged with perfect lighting and tilted or the images are processed.

Sure, but that is indeed the way the coin looks in-hand, just not with a simple single glaring lighting setup.