Ron, thanks for sharing. Those are very nice coins. Would you mind sharing info on the equipment and methodology (ie lighting set up) you are using? These are very well presented coins imho. I’m still using an iPhone with a clip on macro lens and have not been able to produce photos of this quality. That inability has been an impediment to creating my own gallery. Thanks, and again my compliments.
Ken
I don't mind sharing at all. My setup is fairly crude compared to some people here, but definitely more involved than using a smart phone.
I'm using an Olympus E-M1 mirrorless digital camera. Typically I'm using a Zuiko Digital 50mm f2.0 macro lens, which is a lens specifically designed for macro photography. It's on an older lens, so I use an MMF-2 adaptor to mount it to the newer camera body.
If I was
buying a macro lens again, I would get the current generation 60mm f2.8 lens instead, but it's not worth
buying a different lens when the one I have is close to the same performance. The lens aperture speed is irrelevant as I'm always shooting at F22 with flash guns, but the 60mm would allow focus stacking and even higher resolution images.
I do have a 30mm f 3.5 macro lens, and I don't typically use it because the coins sit close enough to the lens that there's not enough room for my lighting setup, so you want a lens that magnifies a little.
The Olympus gear is micro four thirds, so the lens focal lengths I'm citing are 50% of the 35mm equivalents. So for example, the olympus 50mm macro lens is the same magnification as a 100mm telephoto lens on a 35mm film camera. The magnification is just to get the lens further away from the coin to make room for lighting the small subjects like coins.
There are as many flash options as there are coin photographers. Some guys shoot through
glass plates, use static LED lights, etc. I use an Olympus twin flash gun rig built for macro photography, the STF-22. I also have a ring flash, but most coins look better with twin guns you can reposition. Ring flashes
cast the light too evenly, making every coin look flat and lacking contrast between high and low spots.
Here's a vendor pic, though the latest model, the STF8 is now available and is little more compact - it's not worth the upgrade to me.
I shoot from a sturdy tripod, but would like to upgrade to a copy stand - it's easier to use a stand. I put the coins on a white recipe card, and I put a smaller coin under the coin I'm shooting to lift it off the page a little.
I post-process in Photoshop Elements. I use masking and magic wand functions to highlight the coin and then delete out any remaining background or shadow so the coin is against a pure white
field. No matter how
good my shots, there's always some residual background texture and I just delete it so nothing distracts from the coin itself. I then put the front and back together in a single file,
flatten the image and save it. Generally I don't have to adjust levels, contrast, etc. in post processing unless the image doesn't look like the coin in-hand.
Using a repeatable setup is key if you want the
reverse and
obverse images to be identical in size and resolution when you stitch the images together
side by
side.
I
hope that helps!
PS: Here's what it looks like when set up: