Lighting

You are far better served shooting on a neutrally-colored background - white, black, grey. Shooting on color will always give you reflected color onto the coin, even if only bounced off the lens itself.

I've never shot a coin picture with a sunlight-corrected lamp. Literally. Never.

I lean towards a contrast based on the luster of the coin. The brighter the coin, the darker the background. To my eye - and please consider that I'm only talking about my personal opinion here - lustrous silver is best shot against black, and darker copper and silver are best against white.

You have an excellent equipment set for shooting coins. Avail yourself of the camera's Custom White Balance features, and your only required choices for lighting will be how diffusely you choose to apply it. There is no reason why your equipment cannot shoot pics of equal quality to those from anyone here at CCF; it only remains for you to discover how your particular setup achieves this.

I just received my new light stands. Sunlight compensated lighting is a must! You can mess around all day with the white balance on your camera or you can go to the local Photography store and get the right lighting. Makes all the difference in the world. Don't want to use the lights; just shoot in direct sun light! Sameo sameo! By the way, when you start really compensating for some problems in photography the coin can appear much better than the actual condition. Try a I could, changing the white balance did not give me a "truthful" image; Looked a lot less toned. I am taking classes next month. What the heck, they're free.

Matt - High intensity light is not going to alter the quality of light and shadow on a coin. Brighter lighting offers two advantages -

First it allows you to stop down the camera. If you are shooting at f8-f16 you are going to be getting a sharper focused shot. This is important in macro-photography. Generally I set my camera to AP (aperture priority) and force the camera to f8.

Second you can position the light further away and reduce an effect called "Fall Off" were the light is more intense near the lamp reduced to shadow further away.

Also, (though I should do some tests to demonstrate) you can diffuse a bright light by bouncing it or running it through a diffusion filter and this softens the shadows. If I am trying to highlight a specific mark on a coin I will get rid of the diffusion to enhance the detail. However, overall a little diffusion makes a GEM condition coin look more shiny.

That's a stupendous result for bounced light, Stunet. It illustrates the fact that differing camera/lens combinations work differently; this would be an uncharacteristically great result for my setup under diffused lighting, yet is reasonable for yours.

It is a great shot, but what lens, and focal length. My shots come out just as good until I have to convert them to something CCF will allow me to post. Most of the time I can't post anything over 450x450 pixels. Great idea about the umbrella, it warms up the image and you don't get flash bounce or glare.

Depending on the lens, you're not letting a lot of light in at F8 and it restricts the depth of field. Some lenses, relative to the apature, require a great deal of light just to operate on automatic cameras. Are you shooting with manual, or situational settings?

I shall continue my endeavor to persevere.

Okie Dokie, back to the drawing or should I say photo clip board. I shall continue to endeavor to persevere.