Bright silver photo problems

[pierre_p77]

Again, I have problems when trying to take photoes of bright shiny silver coins. This ant. of Herenia Etruscilla is very bright but I can not get that collor in the photo. It gets darker than the real coin.

Any suggestions to solve this problem?

Best regards
Pierre

[moonmoth]

I haven't found a really satisfactory solution to this problem, but I can get close.  With my current setup, I can alter the camera setting from my computer and take two photos with different exposures without moving the coin or the camera even a little.  You can also do this with a good tripod or camera stand and a remote trigger, cable or wireless, if you are careful when changing the camera setting.

One shot will be exposed to capture some detail from the brightest areas, and the other to make the rest of the coin look silvery.

Then I use Photoshop to overlay just the detail from the bright areas, from the first shot, onto the second one. This is why you need absolutely no movement between the shots.

Not all silver coins need this.  With most of them, I can find detail in a single shot and make sure it is still there after processing the photo to bring out the coin's silveriness.  The coin does not need to look bright to look like silver.  I think this example does quite well, and actually a lot of it is quite dark.

Bill

[Enodia]

Bill's method is very good at recreating the original look of the coin, but unfortunately it is way beyond me or my equipment.

i think part of the problem is that there is too much red in your image Pierre. i copied your picture from above and made a few minor adjustments to color and brightness, with the result below. obviously i haven't seen your coin so i can't tell for sure, but perhaps this is a little closer?

~ Peter