How do I take pictures of this tiny, dark coin?

[Christopher H2]

I really want some help to identify this, but I feel that the pictures I take are not good enough to post on the Identification board.

Therefore I ask you here. Can you give advice on how I can take better pictures of this specific coin?

Obviously the easy answer would be "buy a camera". But it's not that I don't want to, I just simply can't afford to!

So if anybody has managed to take good pictures of tiny, darkly toned coins with their cellphone cameras, I would very much love some tips.

I post here the best pictures I currently know how to take. In-hand, the coin has a clear female bust right/cornucopia design, but the pictures make it look like an upside-down pomegranate on one side, and just a worn-out mess on the other side!

I took about 30 pictures with different light and from different angles. These are the two best pictures of each side. (The reverse is rotated a bit between image #3 and #4)

How do I improve?

[Jay GT4]

Does your phone have a "macro" setting?  Usually it is the symbol of a flower.  If not then try setting the camera up on a makeshift stand.  Use cans or boxes to rest the camera on so it doesn't shake.    The more you zoom in on an object the more exaggerated the shake so by resting it on something solid you reduce the risk.  Lots of light helps too.   

[slokind]

For another thread, I just took a test picture of one of these dark little coins:
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=92894.msg576200#msg576200
Pat L.

[Christopher H2]

Yes I should have mentioned that I am already using the macro setting.

I will try making some kind of stand for the cell phone, but it is difficult for me. I will have to make it point at the coin in the right angle. So the stand will have to be fixed. But different coins look better with different distances from camera to coin. So the stand cannot be fixed! Not sure how to solve this currently. I really need a proper camera!

Maybe the sunlight will be better than my night light. I want to try going outside and taking a picture tomorrow.

[Jay GT4]

Yes I always use natural light from a south facing window.  Just rotate the coin to highlight.  You can use different sized canisters, jars or boxes to rest the phone on. 

[Andrew McCabe]

Yes I always use natural light from a south facing window.  Just rotate the coin to highlight.  You can use different sized canisters, jars or boxes to rest the phone on.  

I use a north facing window, with the window open to avoid blue tint. Centuries of painters' studios will vote for north-light being more even, and it's more than bright enough for coins. I also use LED array lights in a darkened room when I'm looking for consistent results. As for distance from camera, I'd keep it constant and crop the resultant pictures to the coin size. Even with Republican asses and silver sestertii I see no need to change the setup. The 40mm asses fill the screen and the 12mm sestertii are still big enough given the megapixels in an average camera. Keeping the camera or phone absolutely level is key. Blurry photos are caused by tilts, especially given the very close focal length for macro photography and consequently small depth of field. It's very easy to keep a camera level with a 3 axis photographers spirit gauge that costs about $5. They are little plastic cubes that I'm always losing so I've bought several and scatter them around the house. My Nokia phone has a screw in regular tripod attachment fitting and for quick photos I use a monkey grip (flexible) tripod that sets up in seconds about 6 inches from the coin. This also has the advantage of being travel-safe, i.e. you can bring it in hand-luggage unlike a full-size tripod, and as I photograph coins when I travel that's a neat aspect. So long as you got the spirit gauge, you just twist the camera til it's level, and you're ready. 60 seconds from screwing the camera onto the tripod to snapping the pic. No need for any permanent stand.

[areich]

For home use, you might want to look into used cameras. It doesn't have to be a DSLR and it doesn't have to ha a bazillion megapixels. Perhaps you can even get an old one for free from family or friends. Then just take some kind of tripod (I used to have a tiny copy stand, which cost me 30€ (and would probably be even cheaper if you built it yourself) and was perfect for small cameras) and you'll be able to take good pictures with most older cameras from one of the leading manufacturers. Many people have old cameras lying around, just like old cell phones. Some smartphone cameras really aren't very good.

[Andrew McCabe]

For home use, you might want to look into used cameras. It doesn't have to be a DSLR and it doesn't have to ha a bazillion megapixels. Perhaps you can even get an old one for free from family or friends. Then just take some kind of tripod (I used to have a tiny copy stand, which cost me 30€ (and would probably be even cheaper if you built it yourself) and was perfect for small cameras) and you'll be able to take good pictures with most older cameras from one of the leading manufacturers. Many people have old cameras lying around, just like old cell phones. Some smartphone cameras really aren't very good.

Great advice. For home use a relatively clunky 5 year old digital camera with about 5 megapixels should be real cheap on the second hand market, and would have the lens quality just as good as a top range camera today. People won't pay for a heavy camera with low pixel count but that wont matter in a fixed setting where your coins are filling the screen, and there's a whole host of features you won't ever need, eg red eye correction. If you have a second hand camera shop in your city and explain your needs they would recommend something. A good lens and good light and a perfectly horizontal setup are far more important than pixels. It's not even necessary that the coins fill the screen, top quality coin photos only need 600 dpi or so, i.e. 0.4 MP for one side of a 1 inch coin. So even if your camera's lens closest focal distance means the coin only occupies the centre of the image, you can get stunning images from a low megapixel old brick, so long as that old brick was at one time good. PS also buy a grey card from a camera supply shot for a few dollars, it'll help sort out colours correctly, either by manually setting white balance on your camera using the card in the same light as you intend to photograph, or if this seems complex, by simply using the card as background as I do, and shooting on auto.

[Christopher H2]

Thank you very much for the amazing torrent of advice. I really hope other people will read this thread as well now.

I have one last question - If I keep the camera horizontal, how do I keep the coins upright? I've seen people twisting paperclips into makeshift vertical coin holders, but I'm worried about the metal-on-metal contact.

[Jay GT4]

The other horizontal! 

Lay the coin flat on the surface or raised up from behind and have the camera directly over it.

[Christopher H2]

Oh I was thinking that the line of sight would be horizontal... not the camera itself! That's how I got it flipped around to vertical in my head      

Thanks a lot for clearing it up!

Seems the biggest issue to me now is that I live on a latitude where the days are REALLY short right now... very little sunlight to catch, and it comes from a terrible low angle.

[ickster]

... with the window open to avoid blue tint.

That could explain the colour I ended up on this shot when I was messing around. I'll need to try this out. Thanks for the tip.

Christopher: Sounds like you're a Canadian 

[Andrew McCabe]

That could explain the colour I ended up on this shot when I was messing around. I'll need to try this out. Thanks for the tip.

Christopher: Sounds like you're a Canadian  

The grey card, or sorting out manual white balance, also materially affects colour. Here is my layman's view of why (proper photographers please amend or add as appropriate): Automatic cameras are set up on the basis that the average snapshot is on average, grey (a typical mix between sky blue, clouds, green grass, faces, Santa's red hat, and all the other things in a normal photo). So when there's just a coin with a background, the exposure settings will automatically adjust on the basis that the pic is probably averagely grey. Hence if neither the coin nor the background contain much blue (and most silver or bronze oxides and patinas are red or green), a compensating blue tint may appear on the photo. Using manual white balance ensures the camera doesn't try compensate; setting the exposure against a grey card, or using a grey card as background means the pic looks averagely grey as far as the camera is concerned, and won't adjust. Whilst I'm not a photographer, I have snapped many thousands of coins, and have tried many approaches to find what works best and is simple. On balance, I find that just having a grey card as background and shooting on auto works just fine for me, so long as the lighting is also ok, and the camera is absolutely level (remember those spirit level cubes I mentioned above). A grey card costs $10 or so. Don't try to use a homemade card, you'll find the paper fibre is stuffed full of the wrong type of colours. Splash out and spend the $10.

Here are a few photos I snapped of my coins last week. Camera was on full auto. No post-photo colour adjustment of any kind. Coins were sitting on a grey card. Lighting was an LED array in a dark room (but might as easily have been north-facing indirect sunlight). The grey backgrounds are indeed grey, and the coins' colours are correct:

[ickster]

I should really do a manual white balance adjustment before taking photo's. Being inherently lazy, I have been just putting the camera on "sun" for the exposure setting.

As for background, I actually have the coin set up about 6 inches on a dowel above a black velvet background and a shield placed around the dowel to prevent light from striking the background, so I think it is using the light off of the coin and not getting mixed up with the background colour.

[Andrew McCabe]

I should really do a manual white balance adjustment before taking photo's. Being inherently lazy, I have been just putting the camera on "sun" for the exposure setting.

I also don't and the result are above. I have done, but on my camera, manual white balance setting requires that the camera be put in full manual mode which involves more faffing around with other things than I'd like, and given that I'm a high volume photographer and also work remote from home, often with constrained time windows, and can rarely guarantee lighting conditions or setups, I've instead worked out lighting that can be consistently set up fast from a small satchel. Monkey-grip adjustable tripod, levelling cubes and absolutely level camera, grey card background, LED lighting array in a dark room with a white cloth to diffuse the LEDs, macro setting, fully auto. That's my recipe, and it gives the above results. Others may use different and better settings and more professional settings; mine are dictated to a great extent by a need for speed and portability.

[carthago]

I should really do a manual white balance adjustment before taking photo's. Being inherently lazy, I have been just putting the camera on "sun" for the exposure setting.

I also don't and the result are above. I have done, but on my camera, manual white balance setting requires that the camera be put in full manual mode which involves more faffing around with other things than I'd like, and given that I'm a high volume photographer and also work remote from home, often with constrained time windows, and can rarely guarantee lighting conditions or setups, I've instead worked out lighting that can be consistently set up fast from a small satchel. Monkey-grip adjustable tripod, levelling cubes and absolutely level camera, grey card background, LED lighting array in a dark room with a white cloth to diffuse the LEDs, macro setting, fully auto. That's my recipe, and it gives the above results. Others may use different and better settings and more professional settings; mine are dictated to a great extent by a need for speed and portability.

Andrew - I like your results but I'm curious what your "LED lighting array" is?

[Paddy]

Read this thread with great interest. Do you think it would be possible to get a picture of your set up, Andrew McCabe?

[Christopher H2]

Hi everybody. I am so happy that this thread has spawned this much discussion!

In case anybody was curious, I have now ID'd this coin. It's of Antiochos IV, and has a bust Queen Laodike right / an elephant head left. "ANT[IOX]OY" is readable with the coin in hand.

Thanks to everybody for contributing to this thread!