Do These Photos Look Okay?

Thanks for the feedback Ray!

Ok, so I removed the ping pong balls and moved the lights back from the Opalux to the point where each light spotlight was just hitting the edge of the Opalux.

Here are a series of photos taken with a Pentax K200D using a SMC Pentax-F Zoom 35-70 mm lens in 70 mm macro mode. Pentax doesn't have a LiveView application, so I used autofocus for all shots. All photos are taken as RAW files and then converted to JPG. The original size of the photos was 3872 x 2592 but are downsized to 1130 x 756 to meet the 300 KByte size limit. No post processing was done to any of photos.

All photos were taken in aperture priority mode, at ISO 100, f/6.3 and no exposure compensation. The shutter speed changes with the number lights that are on. I have 5 Jansjo lights positioned at 8 - 10 - 12 - 2 - 4.

Switched the coin to a Morgan silver dollar to get a larger coin in the aperture, but with my camera/lens combo most of the aperture is still filled with background. I'm using a 18% grey card as the background, but even with manual white balance on the card, it comes out looking mostly black. Here are the pictures...

Lights on: 8 - 10 - 12 - 2 - 4, 1/200 sec


Lights on: 8 - 10 - 2 - 4, 1/200 sec


Lights on: 8 - 12 -4, 1/160 sec


Lights on: 10 - 12 - 2, 1/100 sec camera is indicating that flash is needed


Lights on: 10 - 2, 1/100 sec camera is indicating that flash is needed


What do you think? Which photo looks the best? Does it matter that for a couple of the shots the camera is indicating that there isn't enough light and that flash is needed?

I'm with Ham, the last one. If you now crop it you will have a very good pic.

Yep. That last picture is very nice.

Thanks everyone for the comments




Ray,

I have the flash turned off, but the camera still lets me know it doesn't think there is enough light by flashing the flash needed symbol in the view finder.

I had the ISO set to AUTO, but for all those photos it was auto set to ISO 100.

In order to get a slower shutter speed I would have to change the aperture, but isn't a fast shutter speed better? Fast is recommended by Mark Goodman in his Numismatic Photography book as a general principle. However, since the camera was indicating more light was needed, this is why I was wondering about whether or not there was enough light for proper exposure at the given settings.

Here are some more comparison photos. With these, I changed from AUTO ISO to a set ISO of ISO 100. I then changed the aperture between f/6.3 and f/8.0 in order to get a slower shutter speed. Once again, I played with the lights a little by sometimes having two lights at 10 and two lights at 2 and also adding a partially obscured light at 6.

As before, none of the photos have any post processing done to them, but I did crop these for the comparisons. What do you think of these?

Here's what the coin would like with some post processing (sharpened, contrast and levels adjusted). This photo was at ISO 100, f/6.3, 1/100 sec (obverse) and 1/125 sec (reverse) and lights at 10 - 6 - 2, with the light at 6 partially obscured.

Still looks like the 10-2 is best in this batch

Agreed. I think you are making great progress.

Ray,

All of the photos were taken in Aperture Priority mode, with no exposure compsensation.

I added the partial light at 6 because it looked to me like there was a half moon of darkness in the 6 area. I thought it needed a little extra light in that area.

Thanks for the advice, I'll keep experimenting.