HipShot Photography

This is the article I saw about the coin that was confirmed as a counterfeit. From this one, I started looking at the others, eventually posting the images here. It is from Wayne Sayles book, below.

I like the colours of this coin, but what initially caused me concern was how similar it was to other coins in the lot, particularly a known fake. Going left to right, the first two images below are from a confirmed counterfeit. The following two are the coins I posted. All of the coins, including the other five shown here, are the same colour. As several people here have pointed out, this may not be a problem, but it seemed odd.

Thanks for your assessment. I agree that I need the additional information, but as I don't own the coin and shot it weeks ago, I don't have that information available. All of these questions came up after the fact.

Thanks for the link, but it appears to need fixing. I'm getting a page error. Regardless, I looked it up directly, and it is an excellent match. Thank you.

Thanks for your comments. In their defence, the person who commented acknowledged they were not an expert and suggested that while something looked fishy to them, I should check it out with an expert. Having already found one fake in the batch, I took his advice.

While I don't own the coin shown below, I recently photographed it as part of a larger collection of about 30 ancient coins. Among them was one I previously identified as a fake—not something I was actively seeking, but rather a discovery stumbled upon while researching the coin, with some help from one of Wayne Sayles' books. Fast forward a few weeks, and when I shared the image below on social media—another coin from the same lot— someone on Instagram pointed out that it appeared to be cast rather than struck, as expected, and expressed concern that I might have spent a lot on it. As I mentioned, I don't own it, but this skepticism led me to wonder: could this coin also be a counterfeit? Another reason for my interest, though hardly conclusive, is the colouring of this coin looks strikingly similar to the confirmed fake. Since then, I've tried to gather information about it, but with little success. Does anyone have any thoughts or comments they would care to share? What would you tell the owner of the coin?

I shot this tetradrachm for a customer a month or so ago, and I've been looking for one like it for my collection. Another snake coin. tetradrachm Size in milimeters 27 Coin date 76 - 67 BC Obverse: Cista mystica with serpent all within ivy wreath Reverse: Bow case with serpents, TH and monogram above, thyrsos right, ΠΡΕ left

That's an interesting idea. I'm still finishing my book on the history of numismatics, which is told through over 110 coin images, but this might be my next project.

From my collection, my favorite Britannia is the cartwheel. I like its chunky feel. This one has some wonderful colouring.

For those interested in such things, for over a year now, I have been assembling a collection of images of the works of the masters depicting coins. From Rembrandt to Rockwell, I have over 140 paintings, etchings, and illustrations with more still to add. Check out my collection at https://hipshotphotography.com/coins-and-art

I like this type of coin. There are some excellent examples here. This one came into my studio a while ago and I finally got to shoot it yesterday. I'd love to have it in my collection.

They're single-exposure images, I don't use HDR for coins (but I love it for building interiors) however, on rare occasions, I will use luminosity masks. This image was shot with a macro lens, so it's a 10-frame focus stack to get the entire shot in focus. Of course, you'll notice the entire frame isn't in focus. That's because I wanted a shallow depth of field for this image, so after it was focus-stacked, I used the tilt-shift in Photoshop to put the focus area on a different angle than my camera gave me, and made it as wide as I wanted it. It's best to create a separate layer as a smart object so you can tweak the tilt-shift effect. This image was intended for cropping for either horizontal or vertical presentation in online ads. The best part, I still have the fully focused version if I need it for something else.

This image is not shot with axial lighting but uses the same single light as mentioned above, positioned behind the coins, using the same diffuser and a few small mirrored reflectors in front to throw highlights on the edges of the coins. As always, the position of the camera relative to the light, and the position of the diffuser make all the difference.

I shot the gold coins below a few days ago, both with my axial lighting set up. I use a single light 500 W studio light (with a 30-degree honeycomb grid) on the right side, passing through a layer of Lee 216 diffuser that I positioned closer (or farther away) from the coin as needed, for different levels of contrast. In this case, the diffuser is fairly close to the coins, about 6" away, for a soft even light. It can be up to 15" away for high-contrast light.

Here you go... this is about as "in hand" as you can get. Shot with my cell phone. My apologies to the thread, this is not a gold coin. And this is my axial lighting image, processed in Photoshop. It's not that different.