What a difference lighting can make

[daverino]

I recently got a bronze drachm of Syracuse that was in pretty good shape except for a gash in the helmet of Athena (top photo). I darkened the brassy part (per Jay's suggestion) and then, mea culpa, did a little reversible patching to restore the shape of the helmet.  The second photo was taken in the direct light of a table lamp and it seems to emphasize every irregularity in the surface at the expense of the underlying forms. The bottom photo was taken, hand-held, in the indirect daylight coming through a window and I think it is a success. It brings up the subtle red-brown colors of the patina and, above all else, dramatizes the Greek sense of form for which they were so famous.

It is always a bit of a mystery to me why the results can be so different depending on the lighting. Sometimes one method works well with one coin and quite the opposite with another.

[Jordan Montgomery]

I still cannot photograph bronze at all. I spend an hour or more trying to get nice pictures of my bronzes. But I was able to go from mediocre off-color pictures to a really wonderful image that captured the toning perfectly on this Cr. 200/1 denarius by simply changing to indirect light. The first picture is my original picture, the second is my newer picture using indirect light

[Jschulze]

A great progression in photography on that coin daverino (much better than I've accomplished lately)! One suggestion is to flip that table so that the sun or light highlights the face rather than the back of the head. If you can get those same highlights coming from the left of the obverse, you will improve an already great photo!

Josh

[daverino]

Thanks for the suggestion and the compliment Josh. I will give it a try. I kind of like the somber pensive look with the shaded eyes but  will see what full face lighting will get. With bronzes, I find that the basic challenge is to find the conditions that maximize the larger shapes while minimizing the surface roughness that they usually have. I try to find  a diffuse light that creates contrast and shape but doesn't become glare. I don't use a stand or any particular location for photography. I hold the coin at a few inches from the lens with my fingers and with my thumb against the camera so that the coin and camera  can move together without blurring the photo. Rather amateurish but you can easily get a wide variety of light angles and intensities this way.

Dave

[Jschulze]

That's pretty much what I do as well. It's funny, I have many digital cameras that we've used over the years... But even on a manual setting, I've found that there's a lot of "under the hood" automatic light metering and focusing functions that keep close-up photos; dark, blurry or otherwise less than I want.

I have actually found that good lighting and just my newer iPhone camera produce my best images... But that's probably because I'm a photo rookie. Congrats, either way on a nice coin and photo progression. I currently have a nightmare of rough late bronzes to photograph. Fun but impossible!

Josh