Photo Room At Heritage Auctions In Dallas

Here are re-uploads of the photos I originally posted before photobucket killed all of them. Thankfully I did back up most of my PB account before they pulled the plug.

Only thing I have to add to my original post, is it sure makes it easy shooting to have presets on a station for each type of coin (copper, silver, gold) I would imagine they have also gone to the trouble of calibrating the cameras and have custom set-ups saved to improve work flow speed. They shoot an awfully large amount of coins every day.

Man that is some set up.

BTW this is not much different than the "diffusion at the lens" concept, but on a bigger scale...

dal,
The diffusers were plastic sheeting clamped to a simple frame. Nothing special about them really, one could probably use vellum paper or similar plexiglass in translucent form. I've successfully used a cut up milk carton in the past.

I would guess (was a professional photographer for over a decade) they wattage is either 500 or 1200 watts lamps, not sure the power settings used, but probably they would vary for each different station (copper, silver or gold) and depending on how close to the windows the station is at (ambient light) there was no real control of the ambient light at all in the room which surprised me. The lamps are only at power when firing the shot, you can run them at a lower level to see shadow placement. I assume they calibrated each station, camera lens setting, that would make sense as they are trying to maintain a constant equal level and lighting for each coin they shoot, with an ultimate goal of going to their website for auction and printed catalog.

Westcoin what a wonderful experience, I noticed the images aren't displaying anymore - is there any chance you can reattach them to this awesome thread please?

Moheb1979, yes I re-posted the photos in the thread after I saw photobucket had taken everything down in lieu of making posters pay for that privilege. On another note, I am the same person (Chriss) that replied to you with the Rodenstock lens and Pentax bellows on the FB page Numismatic Photography. Your photography work is great!

Doubtful, they have them in sections, one area for copper & nickel, one for silver another for gold (all areas have multiple camera stations) I'd assume a seperate station or two for the proof cameo coins, just to speed up the shooting, each photographer I saw had stacks of boxes of (you can see a bunch of them in a couple of the photos) that held around 60-100 slabs each. One guy was working on some raw double eagles (probably around 4 or 5 rolls of 20 each). The sports department also sends in the baseball cards and the comics here to be photographed too. They stay really busy, it looked kind of empty because we went in at their lunch time.

Ray, when I was working with an Atlantic records artist as a photographer (started as assistant and doing scans of the old backlog of photos) we used Extensis, I still have the key word key book, it's very detailed, I could come up with a photo if you wanted say one of her singing with the blue guitar, live outdoors, left profile, with a water bottle in the shot. We had a full time person that basically did nothing but take my scans and keyword everything about the shot, It was quite an elaborate system we had developed, but it worked great and was fast. We had around 15K shots on negative and slides, then came digital and we were shooting 5K photos per month on tour minimum, without the keyword book we would never have been able to find and get shots to magazines, publishers, promoters so quickly as we did.

At Heritage, I wanted to stay around the photo room and ask more questions on the Heritage tour, but as I mentioned most of the employees were out to lunch, those still there, were super busy, and we had a group that wasn't all that interested in the photography side. I have no idea what they use for a database, but I would assume it's a custom in house based software program. Heritage put more money than just about anyone in the coin business, early on, towards developing a digital presence, which is obvious today, though their free website, great informational links to PCGS Coinfacts, the other information tied into NGC and PCGS with auction historical pricing, etc. The whole dang company is mighty impressive when you realize the size and scope of what they do.

The gold floor was pretty much my next favorite area we got to see (not many do). Basically a Fort Knox type room, where the bullion business is done. If I recall at the time it was around $7-10 million in gold coins every day that passed in and out of there. Tables with double eagles in stacks of 20 (rolls) just lined up for 3 -4 feet 20 rolls deep. Impressive to say the least. My other favorite part was of course the reference library that my friend Mark works out of, he is their head cataloger, previously with Bowers & Merena. Mark writes up many of the auction descriptions and does all the big named and specialty collection catalogs. Their library was most impressive as well.