What Type Of Lighting Do You Use For Coin Pictures?

Very best suggestion I can give you in this thread is to ensure you know the camera very well, and know how to use a "preset white balance." If your camera has this user-adjusted white balance, you shouldn't have trouble with ANY close-to-white light.

I personally use 75 watt equivalent pig-tail fluorescent bulbs in my copy stand and it works fine.

As an example, although the coins in this photo are ugly, the photo is a very good capture of their color and tone...and all I did was pre-set the white balance before shooting. BTW, I use a Nikon D-80 camera with a Sigma 105mm macro lens.



BTW, these coins are available on the BST board right now.

Umm, yeah...if you are using your flash, you are never going to get a good shot. Turn it off and use steady lighting to get the proper shot.

Definitely use a tripod or a copy stand with some stationary lights... the flash on your camera isn't going to get the job done.

Another member of this forum has used a Canon S5 IS to create images of staggering quality, the equal of a dSLR with dedicated Macro lens in the hands of an experienced user. Admittedly, he augmented the camera with a Canon 500D Macro attachment lens (an $80-100 investment), but it proves that your camera is quite capable of equaling the best images you will see on this forum.

Keep that in mind.

As others have already mentioned, control over the white balance setting is the key to making the "sweet spot" of good setup larger. It allows you to vary your lighting, using different angles and different shapes of bulbs. Sometimes a coin (lustrous silver) reacts far better to more vertical light placement, wanting you to have the light closer to the lens, and other coins want more angled light placement. I shoot high-angle images with MR16 Halogen bulbs, only 2" wide so I can get really close to "straight up and down," but requiring a very different white balance setting than Compact Fluorescent or regular A19 incandescents.

This is going to seem like a whole lot to learn at first. It isn't. Good coin photography is very much an area where you build knowledge step-by-step. Every step yields improvement, and on the other side you'll realize it makes a whole bunch of sense.

Everything we discuss from this point will only be about 3 things: getting the coin in focus, getting the right amount of light on the coin, and getting the camera to realize it's the right light. There are a stupid number of different things you *can* adjust to get to that point - many of them do the exact same adjustment - and that's what complicates it for the less-experienced photographer.

I'm glad to hear that my Canon S5 has the chops to take those kind of pictures, so thanks for all of the lighting and photography suggestions. Now it's just a matter of honing in that skill (and I may purchase a macro lens to help).

I've seen some great photos of coins on this forum and then one of the sellers on ebay that I've been admiring lately (because of the picture quality they consistently demonstrate) is Great Southern Coins. I've noted that their auction sell prices regularly seem to outpace similar coins of the same grade, and I can't help but think that the clarity of their pictures is part of the reason...

dual low wattage halogen desk lamps, under $10 at Mal-Wart.

Natural Daylight is always the best. That's if you have a window where you're photographing. I definitely need to upgrade my lighting situation. Most the time the sun isn't shining when I retreat to my coins.

I'm very fond of the IKEA JANSJO LED Desk lamps. They have a flexible gooseneck and a good balanced color spectrum, not too blue like some "white" LEDs.