Photographing Modern Slabbed Proofs

When there is NOTHING on the coin itself, but reflections wander in from the slab plastic, I just Photoshop the fields.

Never on a coin I'm selling, but just so the glare devils go away.

Try the lights parallel to the coins, f/8, iso 100 and shutter speed as it needs.

I agree with the problem of glare off proof cameo coins and this is about as good as I have been able to capture. My lighting is indirect and I will view the slabbed coin in the view finder and change the angle to get the best black field results.

For a heavily frosted proof, as long as none of the lights reflect off the fields, the light placement is not absolutely critical. With a conical lens-attached diffuser, you can simulate a ringlight, or something close. This seems to work pretty well, as long as the frost is strong:





(Note that this coin is not slabbed, but is in an OGP plastic holder.)


Slabbed fully-brilliant proofs (and perhaps reverse proofs) are tougher. The only thing I have found that works somewhat well is axial lighting, despite the glare off slab. Make sure your source light is completely uniform across the slab in front of the coin, so you can subtract out the glare from the slab using the Photoshop levels tool (or something similar). Even after further processing, the end result does not look great:





(This coin is in a very old PCGS slab)

I'm certainly open for suggestions from Ray or Dave or others on how to shoot slabbed brilliant proofs.

Dave, I will have to see what is available. The center of my lens is probably 4" max from the upright of the copy stand. I assume everything should be even. A 12" light would have to be positioned off center of the coin.

Ray, are you referring to these?

90mm HID White 105 COB LED
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019O1LDJ...ng=UTF8&th=1

I picked up the 90mm one in my link along with a switched cigarette lighter plug and a 120v to 12v adapter (needed one for another project anyway). Should have it mid week.

With the 90mm OD I should be about 1.5 to 1.75 inches off the coin.

This Ike pic was taken with a lens-attached diffuser, with blackout rings:

The conical diffuser just screws into the lens filter ring:




The clear opening is smaller than the lens diameter, but large enough to avoid vignetting at f/5.6 (and f/8):




When shooting slabbed coins, a variable-sized blackout ring is used, so that only black areas reflect off the slab (and mirrored fields on the coin). This blackout ring is just a bunch of step-up rings threaded together. Use just enough step-up rings to avoid unwanted reflections off the slab:




In use, just shine one, two, or more Jansjo lights on the diffuser. Since the diffuser is conical, you can shine the Jansos horizontally to get a ringlight-shaped illuminated area. You can more the lights around to get almost any light pattern (except axial).