More Lighting Compos

For me it's the second shot. There are little to no hot spots.

The toning certainly comes through best in the third shot, and least in the first. I guess if that's a dominant feature of the coin as viewed in-hand, then you'd want to prioritize showing it. Overall though, the first one wins hands down for me. I value sharpness and detail in coin images, and the first one has both in spades. True, in the first image there are hotspots; to me the second and third make up for the lack of highlights with an increase in heavily shadowed lowlights. This gives them a bit of a muted appearance to me. I guess subjectively I'd rank them 1, 3, 2.

Is the workflow the same? The first shot almost looks like it was stacked and the second and third weren't.

Preface: These three shots all have different strengths, and I'd be happy to achieve any of these results!

I would anticipate, without seeing the finished products, that if #3 where treated as #1 with regard to workflow, I would prefer that particular mix of contrast, lustre, toning and detail. But, #2 does present the lustre better than #3... I guess it depends to some degree on the coin!

Ray, I have been trying to think of this....
"reducing mode"...
per say.. as when we take a full MP pick and down size it..."LIKE ME"
and try to get it down to less than 100K..
I'm seeing our using Photo Bucket, so your pictures details are not getting lost in the clouds if we capture them and ZOOM in on them the picture doesn't disappear...So obviously my down sizing by 4 or 3 or 5,, does not get the favored mathematical reduction rate when I try to get to 100K for posting here...
...MY point is this,,,,Ray as done the math.....RESULTS...VUNDABAR...as seen on this site...
However...most of us not using these external sites which CCF allows to present itself full feature...DETAIL..
far beyond the 100K. which looses ? 16MP pick to 100k? lets do the math....CRAP for real detail...
SO should we not be using an out side source which will allow a much better picture to be shown on
CCF........Should we shoot with a lower MP rate>>>?
SO I don't loose so much when I post a pic?
\What would you recommend?

I don't care for the third, which is too flat to me, even if it shows off the color best. I'm torn between #1 and #2 (excluding the sharpness which is not attributed to just the changes in lighting.)

Well, here it is:

The coin has luster, and it has color, and it has a few tick marks and small scratches. Holding it in-hand, the tendency is to use a single incandescent or halogen light and to tilt the coin a bit so the light shines off it, then to tilt it around until all the areas of the coin are visible. We do this because it's not possible to hold the coin in-hand and see all you want to see in a single view. What we ask for from photographs of a coin is simply impossible to duplicate in-hand, and if you snapped a single image of ANY in-hand look, you would be very unhappy with the result.

Now, I like the way you asked the question. Some folks say "nice image, but does it look like that in-hand?", and that question is a pet peeve of mine because, well, no it doesn't. What you asked was "does one of these three lighting setups result in an image that you feel represents this coin satisfactorily?", and answer to that question is yes. IMHO, the image #2 represents the coin best. The coin is both lustrous and colorful, and while image #3-1 and #3-2 show the color the best, they don't do justice to the luster. The lighting is just too high (nearly axial), and too diffused, and the double lights do too much to emphasize color at expense of luster.

I will re-take this coin once again, in a style more like #2, but with the high-resolution workflow, and will publish that result hopefully a bit later today. Maybe image #2-2 will be the definitive one for this coin? We'll see.