Photographing half a coin

[dougsmit]

My evening has been consumed working on a photo that  eventually will be added to my web page on fourrees.  The coin is a cut half of an Athens New Style tetradrachm (Svoronos plate 50 18-27).  The coin has previously appeared on Reid Goldsborough's excellent discussion of fourree owls.  I will have to work on what I want to say about the coin some other night.  Lighting this to show the 'evidence' was more work than I first thought.  These are focus stacks using CombineZ freeware.  

[Carausius]

  Fantastic, Doug!  Beautifully detailed with three-dimensional depth of field. That's a great way to display a cut fourree, and proves the usefulness of focus stacks. 

[n.igma]

Extraordinary. Exceptionally well done!

[quadrans]

Simply perfect 

 Regards
 Q.

[areich]

It is a great photo and I don't want to be a spoilsport. However, I would have had great trouble telling what coin type it was, from the way the pictures are angled. This surely doesn't matter much if you're just illustrating what a silver plated forgery looks like but somehow it just doesn't feel right to llok at a coin and not be able to tell what it is.

[dougsmit]

Perhaps I am influenced by knowing in advance but I found it obvious. Below is the same coin with flat on images of the two sides.  Does it look better in this regard or is it perhaps being only half a coin the problem?  This version does little for the details of the cut which allow such things as reading the direction and numbers of cuts.  Perhaps I should have shown both from the start.  I am not familiar enough with the type to say how far this is from official style and the coin can not be IDed with the third magistrate being entirely on the other side.  The coin is NOT a die duplicate of any of the coins I have seen (Svoronos plate 50, 18-27) and there is enough variation in them that I have no idea how to guess what is missing here. 

[Carausius]

The first photo better displays the cut, and the second photo better displays the devices of the coin. Which is better depends on the purpose for sharing the photo.  If the photo is to illustrate a discussion of fourrees or cuts then the first is best (presumably accompanied by a description of the coin type). If the purpose is to discuss (or sell) the cut coin, then the second photo would be best. Personally, I found the first photo much more numismatically interesting.

[swampaggie]

Beautiful photography and use of Z stacks, Doug!  I would suggest merging all into one image as if one is slowly rotating the coin from one side to the other in their hand.

[dougsmit]

Thank you, good idea.

[dougsmit]

The coin has been added to my Favorites page as a supporting player to my other fourree owl along with my version of the flipover group as suggested by swampaggie.  Thanks again!
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/f57.html