First Coin Photo...comments Please?

I think it's a great shot, the only thing is that the lighting appears to all be coming from the right side causing some slight glare.

Thanks. I'm working on lighting, will take a bit of work to get an improvement. I did manage to find the light balance function on the camera, which helps the color balance. Do you think it has a gradable level of detail?

Jim

If your camera has a WB setting for fluorescent lighting, I'd try that. Otherwise, play around with the setting until colors look accurate. Taking a closer look at your photo, I noticed the highlights are "clipped", which means the details were lost at some point. If your camera has contrast settings, I would lower the contrast and diffuse the lighting by putting translucent plastic or tissue paper between the light and the coin. Below, I've done a few things in Photoshop as a quick demo for color correction and highlight/details:



As a thought on lighting, you might try directing the light towards the face, as it's a focal point on coins. Have fun!

Hi Folks:

Thanks for your feedback. It's good news for me that I won't have to invest in a new camera to be able to share photos of my coins with you.

@ Kurt: The clipping you mention is, for example, at the back of Roosevelt's head, right? I see what you mean, it is definitely an artifact of my lighting setup. Will work on that for future pix. I did find the WB setting on this camera, and it does make a difference, though it doesn't get the color exactly right.

@wheezydog: I see the mark you are referring to. I don't know what it is. I know I didn't put it there. You can't see it with the naked eye, but it does show up under my 10x magnifier. This coin, along with the others that will show up here from time to time, were inherited from my father. This one was stored in a plastic tube, was the third coin down. I'm open to speculation about what caused it.

Thanks,

Jim

I like your shots. Lighting is still a problem for me as well. I will sometimes take a strip of paper and roll it around the object to reflect the light, it works pretty good. What is WB, on a camera?
I forgot to mention that I use the Picasa program to doctor up my photo's.

@rockdude: WB = "white balance", the shots I posted were taken under cool florescent lights, which resulted in the green tint (at least that is how they look on my monitor. Kurt's edited pictures show the color much closer to reality. My camera has a setting to correct white balance, if you know what kind of light is illuminating the subject.

On a related note, my close up lens showed up today, so I will be experimenting again shortly!

Jim

Yeah, but can you grade from it? ;-)

Jim