Fooled By Lighting? Bill?

Hi,

This is your coin, the 1973 D Kennedy DDO. I rotated the picture, cropped it and marked the notches with arrows.

I used lines to indicate where the bottom right of IN has letters that are not the correct shape and indicate die doubling. So even if you cant see the notches in a particular picture, the shape of the letters tell me what I need to know.



Thanks,
Bill

I don't remember "boldly" stating anything. I said the lighting did not lend to being able to see doubling - simply put.

Ring lights are not good light sources for trying to photograph coins under a microscope because they provide multiple light sources on the coin. Multiple light sources simply means light from many directions, not necessarily that there was "outside light" getting through to the coin.

With fewer directions of light to discern in a photo, notching and other attributes of anomalous coins show far better.

Perhaps before jumping down my throat over something I did not say, it might help to back up and read the statements made. I never said you did not have hub doubling. I never said you had outside light getting under your scope. What I did say was that the light used was not the right kind of light for showing doubling, and that changing the light would help your photos.

Now...what would help you with your light source...

If you have five or six LED lights in a ring shining down on the subject and don't have a better choice of lighting, try blocking the three or so in the back half (bottom of the field of view), and diffusing the others with some milky colored plastic, like from a shopping bag. The direct and harsh light provided by the LED emitters is too pinpointed and too direct to cast the shadows necessary to show doubling well. If you can adjust the light so that it comes from one direction, it is far easier to turn the coin so that the shadow from the light falls inside the crack of your notches, showing the doubling far better than any other light or combination of lights. Still, though, I would go with something different altogether. LED is just the wrong kind of light to use on coins.

I have been through the gambit of scopes, cameras, and lighting. My comments here are not for my health, I know how to do it and am quite successful with it. I am simply trying to help you and others with my posts. I have been through helping and teaching three other people at great length how to photograph coins under a microscope, and have taught numismatic photography at the ANA Summer Seminar two years running.

One of the people I helped at length with photographing coins under a microscope bought a ring light adapter for his light box thinking it would be a good source for doubling. It turned out to be a horrible choice. I thought it might just be his method, so I had him send the fixture to me, and even I couldn't use it without heavily modifying it.

Ring lights, and circular lights that shine down from multiple directions are a horrible source for lighting the notching and separation lines on hub doubled coins.

The best lighting solution is a single slightly diffused light source that fits underneath the optics of the scope and is positioned just out of and to the top of the field of view. It needs to shine brightly enough to light the coin, but not so brightly as to cause hot spots in the photo. Most importantly it needs to light the top of the devices and the field of the coin casting a high angle shadow downward onto the subject.

As you have already found, side lighting is a very bad choice for doubling as well. That form of lighting only works with any success with showing the amount of contrast on cameo proof coins in macro shots...it doesn't work well for anything in micro shots.

I usually use the light at 40-60 watts, or about 20 percent of its overall capacity. There's never a need to turn it all the way up to 180 watts.

I use a bent piece of chip board as a slightly curved ramp to tilt the coin slightly toward the light in some cases where sitting flat doesn't provide the light needed. This helps especially for proof coins.

The small blue square is a simple piece of matte board cut into a 2 inch square and used as the table top for the coin. The microscope base is glass, which will scratch coins easily.

A better shot of the setup itself. The tube of coins is attached to one of the guides to show the rigidity of the guides. They are a bendable conduit of sorts with a plastic sheathing. They house the fiber optics that carry the light from the box to the scope. The two guides are wrapped around the base of the scope and pointed toward one another, then the tube is placed around the two guide ends...simple, effective, and works like a champ. Took me about a week to figure this out, and I've been using it exactly like this (even with the same tube throughout) for the past six years.

Additionally, thanks for the lighting and photographing tips. I had actually been looking around on the web a bit for information related to this and was going to post on the CONECA forums later if I hadn't found anything in order to get some guidelines. Most of the stuff I found was about photographing coins for publication purposes, but not for variety inspection at magnified levels.

I'll try the suggestion of blocking half the lights and diffusing the others and see what kind of effect that has. After I posted those comparison photos, I later was able to setup diffusing of the LEDs but I still get the effects of having light coming from multiple directions so it only helps reduce the hotspots.

Not that I need to, but before I read the posts on Chuck's equipment (It is really going to be fascinating to me as I truly get a kick out of the photography aspect of this hobby) , I want to go on record as agreeing with Chuck as his posts prior to this thread indicated that the issue was lighting. Nothing more. Based upon the previous pictures and the lighting, Chuck was not able to render a good opinion.

I know that I will ask people to create new pictures a half dozen times or more if a thread does not have a picture that is adequate to use for a determination. Speaking for myself, but I suspect Chuck thinks this way as well (I don't want this to be construed as speaking for Chuck but I see similar thought processes) ....

Keeping in mind that I am offering opinions based upon photos on a forum, some of which are great (the photos) and some that probably should have been better before they were posted, I try to be careful with my wording. That attempt to be careful will sometimes work depending upon how late at night it is:-) Most of the time though, I try to be careful with what I suggest. I know that before I stick my foot in my mouth and my reputation, (whatever that might be) on the line, I want to see a good picture first. All our experiences are different and I may see something that others may not. That goes both ways. I learn some new things from the people here as well.

The point is that I try to be careful with what I say so that something else is not read into it. Occasionally, I see more read into a post than was there in the first place. The readers of the forum also need to be careful not to "read between the lines" so to speak.

Anyway...I'm gonna go back up and take a look at Chuck's stuff. I am going to become very envious, then I will go off into a corner and whine to myself about not having the probably great equipment that he has:-)

Have a Happy 4th!