First Coin Photo From New Camera

My eyes must be playing tricks on me with the white background. The picture looks very nice, although a bit bright. The funny thing to my eye is that the coin looks like a computer image, and not a picture per say. Very weird.....I just wish my camera would get something that detailed on "auto"!

Regardless, it shows quite a bit of detail, but there is some shadowing. Great depth IMO though because of this, especially in the neck.

I'm sure some of the experts, hmm hmmm Superdave, will have some suggestions for you. Some things catch their eye that I am still a novice at.

I liked it.

A little dark beneath the chin, but the contact marks etc are well detailed.

I guess the reason the coin look like computer image is because it is cropped, we can't see out of the coin.

Am I correct Ken? If I am, can I ask which software you use to crop circular?

RenaL, You are correct. I just picked up a cheap editing package called Photo Explosion from staples but instead of cropping they call it trimming (same thing to me). I specifically wanted circular cropping (or trimming) for some special projects so I'm happy with it.

I think you're going to have fun shooting coins with this camera, if that's the first try.

The generally-accepted method (meaning, that's how the camera snobs do it) of shooting coins is straight-on, usually directly down at the coin. This makes focus and adjustments much easier, as the depth-of-field required to shoot a tilted coin makes you to work with an aperture range that compromises lighting and exposure choices.

Straight-on, you can keep apertures relatively open (f5.0-ish), allowing you to achieve good results with less light and faster exposures. Less light means less likelihood of washing the coin out, and faster exposures mean generally better focus. Shooting a tilted coin requires apertures at or above 8.0, forcing you to lengthen exposure and use a lot more light.

Always shoot the best-quality (largest files) photos you can, Ken. And, as tights24 mentioned, generally the lighter the coin, the better it looks on a dark background.

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Personally, I want the camera to create everything I want in an image and only use editing software for cropping, trimming or positioning. In other words the camera creates the image and not the software.

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That being the case, then, the first thing you need to become completely comfortable with is white balance. Here's a start:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...-balance.htm

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I'm seeing different results for different coin finishes.

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Yeah, that's another thing....the difference between a lustrous, BU Morgan and a circulated, EF one might be as much as 1/400@f8.0 and 1/100@f3.5 with the same lighting.