HipShot Photography

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.

Cool.. I'd like to see the pictures. Were the bars you shot newly minted, or kinda scratchy like the ones I had?

Yes indeed! Three 1-kilo coins at once was a first for me. I've shot plenty of gold kilo bars, or even bigger ones, but kilo coins don't surface very often. Only 50 of the Lacrosse coins were minted, but less than a quarter of them were sold. Another coin from the same series fetched $90,000 US (approximately $117,200 Cdn.) at auction a few years ago. If you're wondering, the coin and bar image above was shot with a single light - essentially a bare bulb - about 2 feet behind it, and up at about a 30-degree angle, placed behind a layer of Lee 216 diffuser, and some small reflectors in front. It takes some tweaking to get the camera angle, the light angle, and the placement of the diffuser just right to light it but not burn it out.

Here's one of three 1-kilo gold coins I had the privilege of shooting recently. This was done with my hybrid axial lighting setup. The gold maple is in there for size reference.

To me, none of those look like they were taken by a professional coin photographer. To be fair, there are so many variables in photography, and over 18 years it seems impossible to make them look the same, even still, they should all be of better quality overall. I've seen some horrid work on the NGC website. Here's a sample of some gold coin images I took, from ancient, medieval, and modern times. Some were certified, others were raw. It's all about the lighting. All of these were shot on a white background (to help light the edges) and the background was removed in post-production. These are presented in my version of the TrueView style.

Your graphic work is exceptional. I particularly like the layouts of your Denarii collections. Well done. Were those created for a specific application or for fun?

Thank you. Yes, those images are focus stacked. Generally, it takes about 15 -20 images to capture a coin.

There is some beautiful work here. When it comes to presentations, let me add my own two cents worth. Personally, I try not to let the background overpower the coins. To me, they are the stars of my show. Simplicity can be your best friend. Sometimes negative space makes the biggest impact. And you can always leave room for text, above or to the side. or, as I do occasionally, go completely off the rails.

Thank you so much for your help. I downloaded the pdf and used google translate, which worked pretty well, but not without a few hiccups. I had to manually correct a number of formatting issues and translation glitches, but overall, very happy with it and the article is excellent. Well worth the effort. Thank you for recommending it. I'm going to add a link to my translated document on my website when I finish the article.

Hello Everyone, I'm fascinated by the history of numismatic photography and I am looking for any gems of information anyone can provide. Does anyone have any stories, anecdotes, references, or links to share? Little known facts? I would be very grateful for any assistance.Also, if anyone can direct me to threads already within this forum on the topic, I'd really appreciate it. I tried searching here but my keywords returned too many results to reasonably sift through.I have been going through the archives of both the ANA and the RCNA, and while it's immensely helpful, it's a slow process, and more importantly, I'm sure this community has a wealth of additional knowledge about numismatic photography beyond North America to share. Anything and everything would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

You may enjoy it but I believe you're shooting yourself in the foot with its light control limitations. It doesn't allow you to feather the light across the coin or control the density of diffusion. A Fresnel lens is hard light when, IMO, coins want soft light with highlights. Of course, my photographic goals are not scientific, but esthetic. I want to create an inviting coin image; one you feel like you can almost reach out and touch. I use light control to achieve this. Perhaps this is not a shared goal. So if not, please carry on.

I realize this is just your opinion, but in my opinion, this is an underestimate, though I suppose that depends on what the expectations are. Photography is a lot like music. You may learn the notes and scales in 2-3 hours a week, though they will hardly become ingrained. Regardless of what style you play, be it jazz, rock, or classical, you can't play it properly, or even adequately with 2-3 hours of practice a week. This will only lead to the frustration I see in so many of the photography-related posts I read here. There's a saying in photography; your first 10,000 pictures are just practice. Again, I guess it depends on what the expectations are, but if you want great coin pictures, just like assembling a great coin collection, you have to put in the work and learn the craft. Otherwise, you will always get out of it what you put into it.

You might be disappointed to learn I use a simple pane of glass from a quality 8x10 picture frame. I built a custom holder for it. It works very well and accommodates coins and exonumia up to 4" in diameter. I position my light source 14" away from the coin, and it has a 40-degree honeycomb grid to focus the light on the glass pane. I also have a few other little tools for controlling the light depending on the coin.