What Istinpolin does and what Mauseus does both are great, only Istinpolin wanted to get rid of contguous shadows, and that is what the improvised light table does. Once Tacrolimus sent me a picture of
his set up, and I think he
had glass on some blocks, or on the cannisters that 35mm film came in;
Doug Smith uses dowels much as Istinpolin uses nails (!): the
glass is much easier. The oven
dish (any size you wish, so long as it's flat bottomed) and the
glass (any size you wish, so long as it securely rests on the oven
dish) were used because that oven
dish had been in the house for many years, but food sticks to oven
glass, so I was glad to find a new use for it. You also could use a white enamel
pan, such as we used for developer in making black-and-white photo prints, or a white box that a shirt or handkerchiefs
had come in, or
writing paper, so long as it was strong enough to support the
glass securely, without wobbling. The opaque white
glass dish seems to
work very well, and I'd rather use it for photography than for baking lasagna and then trying to get it clean!
The
lamp: almost any
lamp can be made to
work, but you might want to put something in front to diffuse it (as you like). A
lamp that
burns cool is kinder to your camera and makes you sweat less. But your camera has WHITE BALANCE. This is a pre-set done over white paper or a gray card, perfectly neutral, 18% reflectivity, from the camera
shop. Without performing white balance first, you will get those peachy and purple and ochre colored coins! Yuck! It is so much
work to try to normalize them in Photoshop and requires some skill, too. Make the camera do it. That is why it
comes with a computer chip and
software instructions built into it. See the owner's manual, or consult with a friend who owns the same kind of camera. It is no longer necessary to endure the agonies of
buying different film emulsions. Numerianus is right, too; a delicate tinge of environmental reflected color, whether from a
red tee-shirt or from the green leafy tree outside your window, can show that your coin is in a real-life space. These, however, need to be avoided for publications. I took my advice from: (1) the ground
glass over a light table we
used to use for photographing sherds and coins, (2) everything
Doug Smith wrote on
his web site as cameras evolved (and half
his stuff is home-made), and (3) the advice I got from Barry Murphy, who knows what
CNG et al. want. Then I took what I
had and imitated. A copy stand is a great
help, and one can be bought at no great cost; you need a rather small one, not the huge ones for copying from large books and posters.
If you want to see a new 'portrait' just taken of a real silver coin, of
good silver, see my
Corinth stater just posted under Rupert's in
Greek Coins. With a shiny coin, the
glass over the
dish comes out gray, just as you see.
Pat L.
P.S. My
glass is 12" X 12", which is similar to 30cm X 30cm, but it could be smaller, depending on the dish/box.
Paintbucket is a 'tool' in Adobe Photoshop. Paintbrush just makes a daub, but Paintbucket, after choosing the hue you want, fills in the whole background (or the whole
area enclosed, if that's what you need), adhering nicely to the difference in hues and levels. Where there are shadows on a dark ground, it 'eats' them, or white areas on a white ground, too. That is what the raised
glass prevents.