Share your Coin Photography Tips & Tricks!

[Kaleun96]

It's a bit hard to see here but back when my fancy setup was just a work-in-progress, I was using a small tripod and a focus rail in this configuration and was able to get the camera perpendicular to the surface without counterweights. I had to replace the ballhead on that tripod with this one since the original one it came with wasn't rated for the weight of my camera + lens.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Kaleun96

[expat]

I found a tripod on Amazon a few years ago. The ballhead is rated for more than my camera plus lens, and it has 105 Degrees limit to it's vertical rotation. With the legs completely retracted, the standard lens is 28cm from the surface. The legs have 3 extension points and when fully extended the camera body is 1.5 mtrs from the ground. Strong, lightweight and have never had a problem with overbalancing or the legs getting in the way.

 

 

[Kaleun96]

Just added a new page to my site comparing JPG vs RAW and whether it's worth it to shoot in RAW (for me). In short, the issue I have with RAW is that when converted to TIFF, the file size is 10-20x that of a JPG and I'm usually storing 100 or more photos per coin since I focus stack. That quickly adds up in hard drive space so I'd rather shoot in JPG if the quality is about as good.

My tests seem to indicate I'd get no real benefit from shooting in RAW for my purposes so it's nice to know for sure that I'm not missing out on anything and don't need to re-photograph my collection! That being said, if you're not focus stacking and are shooting in the field where you have less control over your environment (e.g. macro photography or wildlife photography) or are planning to make heavy edits to the photo afterwards, it's best to shoot in RAW if you have the space on your memory card as you'll be thankful for the extra flexibility you have in the editing suite.

https://artemis-collection.com/photography/jpg-vs-raw/

[Prieure de Sion]

One thing in advance! Today is my first day of professional macro photography. I still have a lot to learn! 

My Olympus Zuiko Makro with 60mm arrived yesterday. I decided to go for the more expensive original 60mm macro because of compatibility. Besides, I "only" paid about 350 EUR in a special offer - so it was "only" about 100 EUR more expensive than the accessory lenses from other manufacturers. So I preferred to go for the original.

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B009C742Y2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 

Then I bought a Photobox. The lighting is adjustable in strength as well as in light colour. I find it very practical with the hole at the top. Now I just need to get my tripod - so that the camera can take pictures through the hole at the top in peace. By the way, I use the grey background. With the black background, the edges fray. With the white background I have problems with the light. Grey is ideal - it softens the light more and I can crop the edge without any problems.

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B08RRT9DXP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 

I still have to experiment with the time, the ISO value and above all I currently only have a skylight. That's not so good for silver coins - I still have to experiment a bit with the side view - to get the reliefs more, too.

I quickly put the set-up together and photographed two coins on the fly. There is still a lot of room for improvement! It can get a lot better. But I'm generally happy with the setup - it's slowly getting better than with the mobile phone camera.

 

 

If the professionals here notice something at first glance that I'm doing wrong - I'm happy and grateful for any tips!

 

[shanxi]

Not bad, but what bothers me is the shadow on Gordian's cheek and the color in general is too bluish, or is this real.

[Prieure de Sion]

2 minutes ago, shanxi said:

but what bothers me is the shadow on Gordian's cheek

Yes, that comes from the single skylight. When I lift my hand in and darken one side, the shadow on the cheek is gone.

4 minutes ago, shanxi said:

and the color in general is too bluish, or is this real.

The coin of Gordianus is really so bluish. But Antoninus' is not. I think I still have to work with the light and the white balance. If the coin is really bluish (Gordianus) it is not noticeable, but if it is more silver (Antoninus Pius) - then it is the wrong colour.

[Prieure de Sion]

1 hour ago, shanxi said:

but what bothers me is the shadow on Gordian's cheek

Oh... i am a idiot 🙂 there is a light diffusor on the set pieces - I dont use it. Think so its better with in-direct lightning and against shadows on this silver coins. Ok... next pictures include the light diffusor...

 

 

Edited September 17, 2022 by Prieure de Sion

[friedberg]

Hello,

ring lights work poorly for coin photography. A lateral light source is better to work out the relief.

Example:

RIC II 1² Vespasian 1062 (C) http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.2_1(2).ves.1062

With kind regards from Germany

 

[Kaleun96]

2 hours ago, Prieure de Sion said:

One thing in advance! Today is my first day of professional macro photography. I still have a lot to learn! 

My Olympus Zuiko Makro with 60mm arrived yesterday. I decided to go for the more expensive original 60mm macro because of compatibility. Besides, I "only" paid about 350 EUR in a special offer - so it was "only" about 100 EUR more expensive than the accessory lenses from other manufacturers. So I preferred to go for the original.

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B009C742Y2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 

Then I bought a Photobox. The lighting is adjustable in strength as well as in light colour. I find it very practical with the hole at the top. Now I just need to get my tripod - so that the camera can take pictures through the hole at the top in peace. By the way, I use the grey background. With the black background, the edges fray. With the white background I have problems with the light. Grey is ideal - it softens the light more and I can crop the edge without any problems.

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B08RRT9DXP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 

I still have to experiment with the time, the ISO value and above all I currently only have a skylight. That's not so good for silver coins - I still have to experiment a bit with the side view - to get the reliefs more, too.

I quickly put the set-up together and photographed two coins on the fly. There is still a lot of room for improvement! It can get a lot better. But I'm generally happy with the setup - it's slowly getting better than with the mobile phone camera.

 

 

If the professionals here notice something at first glance that I'm doing wrong - I'm happy and grateful for any tips!

 

Looking good! One thing you might find with the lightbox is that the lighting might be too diffused at times, though I think it's OK for the most part in these examples. My thinking is that the LED ring in the ceiling of the box is producing a pseudo-axial effect (similar to how I shoot my coins), meaning that most of the light is coming top-down and not from the sides, which can provide a lot of contrast without creating any shadows. You may find that when you add the diffuser, the contrast lessens as more light reaches the coin by reflecting of the walls of the lightbox.

In general you do kind of want to avoid the "light coming from all sides" approach for coins due to the lack of contrast that will result in flat and soft looking photos but based on these photos that doesn't appear to be a concern yet. Though you may notice that change when adjusting the brightness (if possible) of the LED, using the diffuser, or changing the coin height relative to the LED light etc. What you could do if you begin to notice the photos are too diffused and soft is to put some black felt around the walls of the lightbox to reduce the reflections off the walls, or maybe even experiment with just "blocking" one or two walls to provide some directionality to the lighting.

How are you editing out the background? If you're using Photoshop and using the select tool to isolate the background, you can modify the selection to contract it a few pixels more to help get rid of those white outlines around the coin. It doesn't matter if the selection goes a few pixels into the actual coin edge, it will be imperceptible but result in a cleaner looking photo. With the white balance, it does look a touch too purple in the first photo, but Photoshop's "Auto Colour" tool is pretty good at fixing it. I used to try and adjust the white balance by eye in Lightroom but I wouldn't really recommend trying this as the screen you use and the hue of the light your eyes are currently exposed to can bias things quite significantly.

[Kaleun96]

22 minutes ago, friedberg said:

Hello,

ring lights work poorly for coin photography. A lateral light source is better to work out the relief.

I disagree. Any lighting setup can work poorly for coin photography, it depends how you use it. It also depends on your style and tastes. Some people prefer a lot of directionality to their lighting (as in your photos for example) but directionality means asymmetry, so that you have some parts of the coin well-exposed and others parts not. This is of course by design with using a directional lighting setup but I find it can be distracting on high relief coins.

A ring light can be used in a pseudo-axial way to provide my symmetrical lighting and producing contrast not by way of shadows but by using reflection. Light that hits angled surfaces will reflect less light back to the camera than light that hits flat surfaces. This can work quite well for coins as you get contrast around the edges of all devices, not just some, and you tend to have less detail lost since you don't have areas of the coin receiving no direct light, instead just areas that reflect back less light than other areas.

There are pros and cons to both "styles" of lighting though and I don't think either of them is right or wrong, and I personally often use a combination with the main light coming pseudo-axially while I use directional lighting as a "fill" light. I just want to point out that ring lights are perfectly fine for coin photography and have some advantages, it's just difficult to get it right and most people give up after trying to use any random ring light that often produces average photos.

edit:

  Actually this is a good time to mention one of the disadvantages of pseudo-axial lighting, which is this effect that can be seen on Gordian's cheek as mentioned by shanxi.

2 hours ago, shanxi said:

Not bad, but what bothers me is the shadow on Gordian's cheek and the color in general is too bluish, or is this real.

It's not actually a shadow, I think instead it might be a combination of things that causes a relative lack of light reflecting back to the camera. I haven't totally worked out exactly what produces it by my thinking is that it's partly related to the inner diameter of the ring light and the difficulty of having light hit the centre of the coin when the ring light doesn't have any lights in the centre itself (because the camera needs to shoot through it). The second main factor I think is flat surfaces: any light that doesn't hit the flat surface from an angle axial to the lens (i.e. perpendicularly), is going to bounce off and go in some other direction - not towards the lens. This means, combined with the issue of getting light to hit the very centre of the coin, you end up with a relative lack of direct light being able to hit this point and thus it appears both darker and somewhat flat/even.

The non-flat areas of the coin near the centre may be getting illuminated by stray light that isn't hitting it directly from a perpendicular angle and is able to reflect some of that back towards the lens. At least, that's my working hypothesis to try and explain why you see it only on some areas in the centre of the image.

There's a few things you can do to help combat it, such as tilting the coin, using a ring light with a smaller inner diameter, moving the right light further back, using some diffusion to bounce light onto that part of the coin, etc.

Edited September 17, 2022 by Kaleun96

[dougsmit]

Opinion:  Shoot RAW, convert to TIF, process to the best of your ability combining sides and doing whatever you wish regarding to the background.  Save the result as a large JPG for printing and again (using a different name) in a size appropriate for online use.  Then, and only then, free up storage space by deleting the RAW and TIF files.  They have done their job and you have what you need in a format that can be used.  There is no reason to save every step. IF the coin is very important and you will not have it again in the future, save the RAW files also.  The TIF version can be reproduced from the RAW so there is really no reason to save every step.  

2 minutes ago, Kaleun96 said:

I disagree. Any lighting setup can work poorly for coin photography, it depends how you use it. It also depends on your style and tastes. Some people prefer a lot of directionality to their lighting (as in your photos for example) but directionality means asymmetry, so that you have some parts of the coin well-exposed and others parts not. This is of course by design with using a directional lighting setup but I find it can be distracting on high relief coins.

A ring light can be used in a pseudo-axial way to provide my symmetrical lighting and producing contrast not by way of shadows but by using reflection. Light that hits angled surfaces will reflect less light back to the camera than light that hits flat surfaces. This can work quite well for coins as you get contrast around the edges of all devices, not just some, and you tend to have less detail lost since you don't have areas of the coin receiving no direct light, instead just areas that reflect back less light than other areas.

There are pros and cons to both "styles" of lighting though and I don't think either of them is right or wrong, and I personally often use a combination with the main light coming pseudo-axially while I use directional lighting as a "fill" light. I just want to point out that ring lights are perfectly fine for coin photography and have some advantages, it's just difficult to get it right and most people give up after trying to use any random ring light that often produces average photos.

I agree fully.  There is no one answer to a million different questions.  My personal experience tend to use a combination of directional and ring lighting most of the time but 'most' is not 'all' and the only reason for finding one answer is if you are rushing to shoot thousands of coins for a sales catalog and don't have time to treat every coin as it might deserve if 'best' is the goal.  If what you want is met by holding a coin in your hand and snapping with a phone, go for it.  

I still own my 1970 (4) copy of International Photo Technik magazine which introduced me to shooting ancient coins if you are willing to do absolutely everything and have unlimited budget.  Those photos were lovely and almost as good as some we have posted here and now with our digital equipment.  There have been many advances in many things since 1970.  My 4x5 Linhof view camera is still in the attic but will never again expose film.  That article introduced me to the idea of raising the coin on a pedestal but now I use the soft grip salvaged from a disposable ballpoint pen at a fraction of the 1970 'Styroper Pedestal' price.  In 1970 you planned carefully and exposed a sheet of expensive cut film.  Today, we try a thousand answers and throw out the 999 worst ones.  There are many ways to 'skin a cat' as my grandmother used to say.

[friedberg]

Hello Kaleun96,

you are absolutely right. Ring lights can of course be used. The problem is that Prieure de Sion's ring light is permanently installed in his light tent. He only has vertical light from above. As a result, he can only change the angle by angling the coin himself. Maybe it will help him to mask off a part of the ring light.

With kind regards from Germany

[Prieure de Sion]

1 hour ago, dougsmit said:

Opinion:  Shoot RAW, convert to TIF

Yes - first I take this pictures only with JPEG - not as RAW... so I can't edit good with Lightroom or Photoshop. Next pictures I will take with RAW Format.

 

Ok - thanks all! Tomorrow I will shot an new series with your tips! And will present it here! Thanks a lot to all!

[Kaleun96]

3 hours ago, friedberg said:

Hello Kaleun96,

you are absolutely right. Ring lights can of course be used. The problem is that Prieure de Sion's ring light is permanently installed in his light tent. He only has vertical light from above. As a result, he can only change the angle by angling the coin himself. Maybe it will help him to mask off a part of the ring light.

With kind regards from Germany

I still don't think only having top-down lighting is inherently bad, I've photographed plenty of coins like that. A bigger concern, IMO, is the light reflecting off the three walls and resulting in too much indirect light hitting the coin rather than direct light. It also seems that from the Amazon link Prieure posted, you always have the "front" wall open so if he needed a bit of directional lighting he could have a light placed here.

Just as an example, I think I photographed this coin only with a ring light and no off-axis directional lighting. You can see how most of the devices have contrast on both sides, rather than just on one side if you used off-axis lighting at an angle.

 

Just remembered I forgot to comment on your photos before! I think they're great and the setup you're using is clearly working for you. They remind me a lot of Roma Numismatics' "alternative" photos that they use for the nicer coins they auction (for example).

[dougsmit]

Over the years I have made several comparison images to illustrate the idea that the same coin can look different in different lights.  I stumbled upon this one today having forgotten why it was made. The problem is that such a comparison omits the fact that any one of the options could be improved or worsened by a change in the light angles or the size/design/diffusion of the lights.  There is also a problem set caused if the two lights used do not have the same color temperature.  My goal was to be able to look at a coin and decide what lighting would show it both fairly and to best advantage.   It might be interesting to make a few more examples of this nature using different coins which might help decide if one or the other is consistently our favorite.  In this case, I prefer the 'Both' image which softens the shadow on Commodus' face from the 'Ring' version. I do not like the 'Direct' but have to wonder if some tilting or rotation would make it better if not as good as the others. 

[Prieure de Sion]

Sometimes its subjective - but I feel your example with the "Ring" is for my opinion - nicer... I like the "Ring-Example" more.

 

Btw. I have two scenarios.

Private. If I want to photograph a coin for my private collection, I have all the time in the world to experiment. Then I want the best setup for each individual coin. But later, of course, all the coins should have roughly the same style for the collection. But time doesn't matter.

But then I have the scenario for the sale as a priority. I have to photograph 10, 20, 30 coins quickly - so that the interested parties get a fair picture - but I don't have time to concentrate on each coin and experiment. I have to find a setup here - which is a good average for all the coins. This has priority for now.

[Kaleun96]

3 minutes ago, dougsmit said:

Over the years I have made several comparison images to illustrate the idea that the same coin can look different in different lights.  I stumbled upon this one today having forgotten why it was made. The problem is that such a comparison omits the fact that any one of the options could be improved or worsened by a change in the light angles or the size/design/diffusion of the lights.  There is also a problem set caused if the two lights used do not have the same color temperature.  My goal was to be able to look at a coin and decide what lighting would show it both fairly and to best advantage.   It might be interesting to make a few more examples of this nature using different coins which might help decide if one or the other is consistently our favorite.  In this case, I prefer the 'Both' image which softens the shadow on Commodus' face from the 'Ring' version. I do not like the 'Direct' but have to wonder if some tilting or rotation would make it better if not as good as the others. 

On this note I've been curious about Reflectance Transformation Imaging as a tool for this purpose, though hesitant to get involved since it would be quite a significant project. Essentially, it would let you experiment with different lighting conditions virtually but you are still somewhat limited to the lighting setup inside the dome - you can only turns on or off individual lights.

Though looking at it again, it seems making one on a smaller scale that would suit coins could be feasible: https://petapixel.com/2016/04/21/shoot-super-detailed-macro-photographs-rti-camera-rig/

One thing these RTI setups can't do, as far as I'm aware, is allow for adjustable distances between the subject and lights. I made this GIF for one of the articles on my website which illustrates how important light-subject distance can be for ring lights:

[Nerosmyfavorite68]

When do you think there will be a more foolproof point and shoot that will be good enough for coins?

While I can take good to even very nice photos of people with my Sony alpha 77, I've been disappointed with photos on my Note 20 Ultra.  Although I haven't taken that many of people on that, I've been disappointed with the amount of noise (especially on background objects) on both 108 mp point and shoot mode, and 12mp pro mode. The ones in pro mode I took were actually slightly worse than jpg (noise), although dng's gave greater leeway for noise reduction.  The outside photos on the point and shoot (108mp) had less grain, probably due to automatic noise reduction.

It does offer the press the screen in the desired place to focus, but I've been nervous about that, because unlike my old Galaxy, everything but that point seems to be blurrier on the few times I've tried. I haven't been tapping the focus on point and shoot.  The tapping part worked great on my Galaxy S5.

Granted, the photos were taken at 6 and 7 pm, outside on a patio.  However, a friend's son took a few on my phone and they were just fine (other than regular artifacts on jpg mode).

They were much less crappy than a friend's pictures sent to me from their night out (noise galore), and on a phone screen one probably wouldn't notice the noise on my photos, but I was rather bummed about it.  I was viewing it on a pc screen.

While the larger camera is advertised at 108mp, probably due to the lack of a raw mode, it's more like 50 mp.  They quickly look like crud after about 70% size.

This does segue into coins.  If I can get the focus right, I can probably do a passable photo on the phone.  I have watched several youtube tutorials related to the camera on the Note 20 Ultra phone.

Non-macro pictures turn out great in semi-auto mode on my Sony.  I have it set to programmed ultra, where I give it a maximum ISO (low) amount.

I'm not a photo dunce.  I know the basics, but it still hasn't really worked on manual mode. That never seems to work out right (never is sharp enough), even though I know what ISO to use.  It just seems like one of those impossible things. 

Other than the lighting, I was actually happy with some of the earlier coin efforts I made with the Note.

One wonders why the 108mp camera on the Note 20Ultra isn't hooked up to the pro mode?

I'm going to probably have to go with the Note for coins.  I just don't have the proper tripod (that could be fixed, I suppose) nor do I really have room for a lot of extra stuff to take Dslr coin pictures.

I'm waiting until I find a proper ring light to try again, but that brings up the conundrum of how to place the ring light, using a phone.

 

 

Edited September 18, 2022 by Nerosmyfavorite68

[Prieure de Sion]

I experimented a little further. It doesn't matter at all whether I dim the light at the top - or whether I cover the sides. I also played a bit with the white balance. But somehow everything seems trapped in the box. I will experiment without the photobox from tomorrow. The coin will stand free on the table, external lighting and then photograph like this. Let's see what results I get here. But everything I did in the box (brightness, reflection, light colour of the LED ring etc.) had no great effect.

The "stain" on Gordianu's cheek is really there... it doesn't matter what light ... the spot really exists on the cheek. Maybe he got a slap in the face from his wife. The camera and the lens only represent the stain on the cheek very realistically.

The only difference was - when I set the light to 100%, the coldest light - and removed all the dampers. The one coin with this setting stands out. The rest did not have much effect.

 

I liked the first pictures I took yesterday without the light damper (see pictures above) better. From my point of view, the coins look more "silvery" and "metallic". 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2022 by Prieure de Sion

[Nerosmyfavorite68]

I'm perusing ring lights.  How do I find the goose neck ones? I'm not finding those, just the straight up and down ones. Do I need about 6 inches, 8 inches?

The initial setup I'm going for is the phone pointed straight down, supported by books/objects.

[Kaleun96]

2 hours ago, Prieure de Sion said:

The "stain" on Gordianu's cheek is really there... it doesn't matter what light ... the spot really exists on the cheek. Maybe he got a slap in the face from his wife. The camera and the lens only represent the stain on the cheek very realistically.

By "stain" are you referring to the part circled red in the image below? If so, I don't think it's a stain, or there may be a mark there on the coin but the dark spot itself is predominantly caused by the lighting. I've circled in orange other parts of the coin on both sides that have the same problem I mentioned earlier. I used to get it a lot in my photos but I've gotten better at combatting it, still you can see hints of it in some like the second photo below showing the slightly darker flat areas circled in red.

It may be that everything you've tried doesn't help improve it as I think it's largely to do with the LED ring itself and either the distance or diameter would need to be changed to help lessen it. Possibly tilting the coin would help, or you can add some white paper close to the coin to reflect some more light from the LED ring onto the coin from an angle.

[Kaleun96]

 

2 hours ago, Nerosmyfavorite68 said:

I'm perusing ring lights.  How do I find the goose neck ones? I'm not finding those, just the straight up and down ones. Do I need about 6 inches, 8 inches?

The initial setup I'm going for is the phone pointed straight down, supported by books/objects.

I bought this one and it's the one I used in the guide on my website but it broke fairly quickly. It's still useable, the "head" that holds the LED just came loose from the gooseneck and I had to fix it with some epoxy. That's just the ring light I used for the guide though, for my normal photos I have a 3D printed ring light that attaches to my flash heads.

I can't recall exactly how long the Amazon right light is but it was a good length, probably about 40cm or so. The diameter of the ring light itself is about as wide as you would want to go too. A lot of the other ones on Amazon are more for videography and have massive ring lights that wouldn't work well for coins.

2 hours ago, Nerosmyfavorite68 said:

While the larger camera is advertised at 108mp, probably due to the lack of a raw mode, it's more like 50 mp.  They quickly look like crud after about 70% size.

The lack of sharpness and the noise is probably mostly due to the issues I mentioned earlier about cramming 108 MP into a sensor the size of a fingernail. It boils down to the adage that "megapixels aren't everything" and this camera phone is really the perfect example of that. What matters more than the number of pixels is the sensor itself, not only the size of the pixels but also how much information can be captured by each pixel.

So when you have very tiny pixels in a relatively tiny sensor, the camera's ability to resolve detail diminishes, as does its ability to capture a lot of light and dynamic range (hence the noise). So RAW mode or not, or Pro mode or not, the limitation is going to be the sensor and for coin photography it probably won't be any better than a standard camera phone.

Edited September 18, 2022 by Kaleun96

[Nerosmyfavorite68]

Ok.  Well, some people are coming over for the football game.  I'll practice some with the 'pro' mode.

I wasn't hoping for Dslr quality, but the professional photographers got some nice results, and even friends with iphones got very passable results, without trying much.

I'll look at the link as soon as I can, thanks!  I'm ordering the Severus Alexander led bookmarked stand and trying my best to find a gooseneck smaller one.

Practice makes perfect. I'm not all that used to newer camera phones.

Coin tests are probably some weeks away.

 

[Nerosmyfavorite68]

Ah, I had noticed that gooseneck led while perusing.  I guess I'll have to find some book to clamp it on to.

I'll also peruse for that smaller, inverted (so I can do straight down) dslr tripod.  That will probably be tougher to find. I want to put a short (straight down) tripod on my Philco chairside (the 'photography station').

And I'll have to order the extension tube Severus alexander had mentioned; I bookmarked that.

I'm not huge on taking pics with camera phones, but lugging a dslr to a bar would have been impractical.

I'll let you know if I make any progress!  We shall see if one of the above factors leads to a breakthrough, whether it be regular camera or camera phone.  I don't expect to take anything as beautiful as your coin pictures, but I aim for passable.

 

[expat]

These are two I purchased a few years ago. Large ring light with a 5in inside diameter. 3 "heat" settings and 9 brightness levels. Fully adjustable and removeable tripod with full rotation ball joint and an adjustable holder for device at the rear. USB charging lead

2nd one is a 2in inside diameter that clips to the device. 3 brightness levels, USB charging lead