Taking Good Pictures Of Coins

I too am trying to figure this out. I've had some pretty good luck placing my Apple camera/phone on a PCGS/NGC box directly above the coin. Results improve a bit if I place the subject coin on top of a smaller coin. It also seems that a dark background produces better images than one that is light colored.

DominikWSP list what you are using to take your photos. upload a couple of pictures. we can go from there.the forum is a great place to get help.

OK, sure, I will post my pictures tomorrow (right now it is 10:40 pm here in Belgium).

Marti, those shots are good and I like your setup, its similar to mine. Except, how did you make the black PVC tube? Also, do you shine your lights directly down onto the coin ontop of the doweling? Or pointed at the wall do they reflect somehow?

Also, Dominik, taking photos of coins really is about the lighting and the steadiness of the camera. Even if you have the camera on the sturdiest of copy stands, and you manually press the shutter button, it still creates a TINY blur, so its best to hook software up on your computer to manually control the shutter button from your PC, therefore eliminating any minute shakings of the camera. Another tip, to fill up the huge pixel display that cameras now shoot, it is best to have the coin fill up most of the viewfinder, but you have to get quite close without a long lens and therefore the camera will not be able to get much light in and that = bad pictures. If you can get the camera further away, purchase a longer lens 55mm-105mm, then the coin can still fill up the viewfinder with the added zoom of the lens. But, all in all, its ALOT of trial and error :D

The thing I like about the pvc tube is it makes everything around the coin completely black. I dont have to photoshop the field around the coin after. These shots above have had no modification in photoshop at all other than cut/paste and cropping.

Ah I see, thanks for that. The first photo of the proofs is definitely better. Much clearer. In fact, you can't even see the hair on the top left Quarter Dollar in the second photo. Well I'm going to get me some of that tubing, because your Roman coin photo looks fantastic. I've got tiny little corks that I use to balance coins on, but I'm going to steal your ingenuity if you don't mind, and go look for some doweling :P

I just did some experimenting and shot some non proofs using the back lighting off the wall. I must say I think it works better in almost all circumstances. I re-shot my whole 12 Caesars gallery using that technique instead of direct lighting and they all turned out much better. I think I will be using this lighting for all my shots now.

Here is one of them.



Also note that the Galba image I posted above has been replaced with a back-lit shot, so if you are seeing this for the first time or have cleared your browser cache, you are no longer looking at a directly lit image.

MartiVltori,
Are you using the term "backlighting" properly? I think that would be "indirect" or "reflected" lighting? Your photos using the light reflected off the wall make your coin photos look great.
John1