HipShot Photography

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.

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.