Advice On Improving Image Of Surfaces - LWC 1943

hello mark looking good. this penny is made of steel. as I remember. it will be a tough one to photography. mark, ray has a thread here on the forum smile director. it will help a lot with this coin.in the mean time I will see if I can find my steel american penny. I will photograph it let you know how I did it. looking good mark

dd27, try it again at the aperture Ray is recommending and post the new photos here. You should be getting much sharper photos with the equipment you are using, and I think you probably want to solve that first thing.

I experimented by taking side-by-side photos at every aperture with each lens I have in order to get a better understanding of what results to expect. I find that for coins, f8 and f11 yield best results.

I'm finally getting back to this (learning how to use my new camera setup) after vacation and being busy with work.



I set everything up per your instructions, so I assume I am using the lens-mounted diffuser. But just to make sure, what does it look like?

Thanks!

Mark

Ray,
Jog my memory....about how far is the distance between the diffuser and the coin to get fairly even lighting? I'm working on dimes now...a lot of luster....a lot of headaches on lightingty

Ray,

I've attached (2) pics, both PP to some degree. APO Rodagon D 75mm f4 lens on bellows/A-stand. Canon T6i.

First one is with diffuser set at about 3.5" above the coin, with lights about 3" from the material. 2 lights at 10/2, 2 at ~8/4. Also, I've removed the convex lens from the Jansjos to allow the light to spread more vs being a spotlight.

The second photo is without the lens diffuser, lights in about the same position. However, I diffused directly on the lights with (6) layers of opalux cut to the size of and attached to the light head. Lights are about 6" from the coin.

Which is more appealing to you et al? What could be done to improve? To my eye, the second photo is closer to the in-hand look, but that's more of a subjective opinion. Thanks in advance.

Diffuser at lens



Diffused at light head

MamaS,
What is your lighting setup for your auction pics?

Andy...the 2nd pic is far superior, but you can probably move the lights around and play with settings to get a similar result from the lens mounted diffuser. It appears you're shining the lights onto the diffuser in too wide an area. A major indication is the light shining on the underside of FDR's jaw, which does not appear in the 2nd photo. This clearly indicates the lighting is not quite the same, and that you're shining significant amount of light onto the lower part of the diffuser. You might simply try masking off the lower part (or putting a small piece of thick paper or cardboard over it) to eliminate the light from hitting that part. Same thing goes for the very top of FDR's head, which is brightly lit in the upper shot, but showing shadows in the lower. Blocking off the diffuser from 11-1 will help with this. Another thing about the upper pic is it's overexposed compared with the lower one. Your metering / zoom box (white box in Live View) should be placed over the brightest area of the image just before you shoot. This forces the camera to meter on highlights and if you set the EV to -1/3 or -2/3 you can keep those areas from being overexposed. I think with some judicious tailoring of the light patterns, and careful work to eliminate overexposure, the lens mounted diffuser can probably produce as good and likely better results than straight diffused Jansjos. Neat coin BTW...Ray