Lighting - which one's better?

[Viriathus]

Hi everyone. Recently I've been trying out different lighting methods and experimenting with mirrors and light diffusers. I'd like to know your opinion and if there is something that I can improve. Personally, I think I prefer the one with the white background.

In the first photo, I used natural light and a mirror to reflect some of the light to the dark side of the coin. I placed the coin between the light source and the mirror.
In the second photo, I used a lamp which I directed to a white wall, which would then illuminate the coin through a light diffuser.

[Akropolis]

In my opinion, the second image is far better than the first.
PeteB

[Randygeki(h2)]

I like the second more as well

[areich]

I agree. I can't quite imagine the set-up though, do you have a way of taking a picture of it?

[Viriathus]

Thanks to all for your response!

do you have a way of taking a picture of it?

Yes, I made a photo of the setup in case someone asked me for one.

[Viriathus]

I forgot to say that I put the coin inside a sheet of paper which I folded into a small "chamber" to minimize the shadow of the coin. It looks silly, but it really works!

[Mark Z]

Do you have a diagram for folding the paper?

mz

[Viriathus]

Do you have a diagram for folding the paper?

I have drawn one. It's just something I made up... There's got to be something better than this, but it does the job!

[cmcdon0923]

Interesting setup.....I may have to try that.

I agree that the second image is superior.

The only minor suggestion I might have is to try elevating the coin a bit off the surface.  There is an ever so slight shadow along the bottom edge of the coin that this should be able to eliminate.

[Viriathus]

There is an ever so slight shadow along the bottom edge of the coin.

Thanks for your opinion! I'm glad you liked the set-up. I've added the shadow intentionally with photoshop, I thought it would give it a more natural look. But you're probably right, I'll add the same photo without the shadow. It does look better this way!

[Mark Z]

Great!

Now, could you show where the light is?

Thx!
mz

[cmcdon0923]

There is an ever so slight shadow along the bottom edge of the coin.

Thanks for your opinion! I'm glad you liked the set-up. I've added the shadow intentionally with photoshop, I thought it would give it a more natural look. But you're probably right, I'll add the same photo without the shadow. It does look better this way!

In my opinion, a near perfect image. 

[Viriathus]

Now, could you show where the light is?

Hi Mark, sorry for the late reply... I've been a little busy lately. In one of the photos I've uploaded to the thread, you can see a large white desk lamp I placed next to the tripod. But I've made a schematic representation of the setup (as seen from above) to make it easier to understand.

In my opinion, a near perfect image. 

Thanks a lot! I really appreciate it 

[Mark Z]

Viriathus,

OK, excellent!

I am going to try that first chance I get, although finding a blank white wall might be difficult! I might skip that step and go directly through the diffuser.

Thanks for taking the time

Regards,

mz

p.s. BTW, what are the dimensions on the card before cutting it up to make the box?

[Viriathus]

No problem Mark! I'm glad I can help. I happen to have a white wall in my room. I needed it because the light was too strong, maybe you have a softer one.
The card is an A4 sheet of paper (210 x 297 mm). I hope you get good results!

[Mark Z]

OK, now i have to get my calculator out...

Approximately 8" x 11" or a sheet of paper

If I get a good result I will post

Thanks again!

Regards,
mz

[PtolemAE]

There is an ever so slight shadow along the bottom edge of the coin.

Thanks for your opinion! I'm glad you liked the set-up. I've added the shadow intentionally with photoshop, I thought it would give it a more natural look. But you're probably right, I'll add the same photo without the shadow. It does look better this way!

great results.  looks like your main light is a long shape, not a 'bulb'?  anyway it seems the diffusion of indirect lighting is a big factor in smoothing out the surface exposure.  i definitely need a better light diffusion screen.  yours looks like a large piece of translucent plastic and that should work much better than the marginally effective methods i've been using.  silver is hard to photograph so you're definitely doing something right.  thanks for the tips.  your paper light reflector was easy to make.

PtolemAE

[areich]

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90202268/

[Viriathus]

great results.  looks like your main light is a long shape, not a 'bulb'?  anyway it seems the diffusion of indirect lighting is a big factor in smoothing out the surface exposure.  i definitely need a better light diffusion screen.  yours looks like a large piece of translucent plastic and that should work much better than the marginally effective methods i've been using.  silver is hard to photograph so you're definitely doing something right.  thanks for the tips.  your paper light reflector was easy to make.

PtolemAE

Thanks PtolemAE! It's nice to know that, after trying so hard to get a decent photo You're right, I didn't use a bulb. Actually I used a fluorescent lamp, because it closely matches the color of natural daylight. The chopping board areich shows us is exactly what I used to diffuse the light! It really helped me. It's great you made the paper light reflector, I hope it will be useful to you

[PtolemAE]

great results.  looks like your main light is a long shape, not a 'bulb'?  anyway it seems the diffusion of indirect lighting is a big factor in smoothing out the surface exposure.  i definitely need a better light diffusion screen.  yours looks like a large piece of translucent plastic and that should work much better than the marginally effective methods i've been using.  silver is hard to photograph so you're definitely doing something right.  thanks for the tips.  your paper light reflector was easy to make.

PtolemAE

Thanks PtolemAE! It's nice to know that, after trying so hard to get a decent photo You're right, I didn't use a bulb. Actually I used a fluorescent lamp, because it closely matches the color of natural daylight. The chopping board areich shows us is exactly what I used to diffuse the light! It really helped me. It's great you made the paper light reflector, I hope it will be useful to you

I tried some test shots on a silver coin using the reflector but my lighting isn't right.  Using compact flourescent with some diffusion, but not enough to really smooth out the light so still got highlights or not a great photo. some were ok but not as good as i want.  time to get a better diffusion sheet like that chop surface.  I shall report back on the next results.  the coin is a very high relief tetradrachm that makes for a difficult subject.  if i can get a good photo of it i can get a good photo of anything.  better diffusion may be the solution.

PtolemAE

[Viriathus]

I tried some test shots on a silver coin using the reflector but my lighting isn't right.  Using compact flourescent with some diffusion, but not enough to really smooth out the light so still got highlights or not a great photo. some were ok but not as good as i want.  time to get a better diffusion sheet like that chop surface.  I shall report back on the next results.  the coin is a very high relief tetradrachm that makes for a difficult subject.  if i can get a good photo of it i can get a good photo of anything.  better diffusion may be the solution.

PtolemAE

Elevating the light source a bit might help when photographing coins with high relief. But that chopping board will make things a lot easier. If the results still don't seem to be good enough, I have found a (simple) post-processing method to correct over- and underexposed areas with photoshop (I'll add an example). I don't know if you have photoshop or another similar program but I'll tell you anyway:

1.- Open your photo.
2.- Duplicate the original layer and place it above that layer.
3.- Change the blending option of the upper layer to "overlay".
4.- Desaturate the upper layer: go to Image Adjustments Desaturate (or press SHIFT + CTRL + U).
5.- Invert the upper layer: Image Adjustments Invert (or CTRL + I).
6.- Give the upper layer an opacitiy around 20%-40%.
7.- Add a gaussian blur to the same layer: Filter Blur Gaussian Blur, around 30-40 pixels.

You can also add a third layer on top of those two, to enhance the photo some more:

Repeat step 2, 3 and 4 on a third layer.
5.- Add a high pass filter to this new layer: Filter Other High Pass, around 10-30 pixels.
6.- Give this layer an opacity of 40%.

And yes, don't forget to post the photos when you're done! I'd like to see the results

[PtolemAE]

I tried some test shots on a silver coin using the reflector but my lighting isn't right.  Using compact flourescent with some diffusion, but not enough to really smooth out the light so still got highlights or not a great photo. some were ok but not as good as i want.  time to get a better diffusion sheet like that chop surface.  I shall report back on the next results.  the coin is a very high relief tetradrachm that makes for a difficult subject.  if i can get a good photo of it i can get a good photo of anything.  better diffusion may be the solution.

PtolemAE

Elevating the light source a bit might help when photographing coins with high relief. But that chopping board will make things a lot easier. ...

OK - I didn't use any photoshop but here are results with a cylindrical diffuser of white translucent plastic.  First coin is a tetradrachm and I found I needed some kind of reflection back down from the top of the cylinder-diffuser to get some even spread of light over the surface from above.  Accomplished with a sheet of white paper sitting atop the cylinder, with a hole cut in it to let the camera see through to the coin below.  This came out fairly well but I have some addiitonal ideas to try - a better 'top reflector'.  So far the tetradrachm looks accurate but it doesn't give its true visual impression of 'shininess' like your photos show nicely.  More refinement of the upper reflection gadget should help.  So the first photo-pair here is the tetradrachm shot as described, minimal 'processing' (a bit of gamma adjustment).  Interesting that the reverse appears to look a little better than the obverse, probably because the coin naturally was tilted a bit when sitting on its very high relief obverse so it's not getting the light 'straight on' from above.

Second photo-pair shows that the cylinder diffuser is not so useful with a large bronze coin.  The two photos side-by-side in this case are (left) with the diffuser (no top reflection paper), (right) without any diffuser, just lights.  I like the right photo much better even though it has less accurate color and makes the coin look sort of 'gray'.  The brown on the left, done with the diffuser cylinder, is close to the coin's real color but the photo is very 'flat' and ghost-like, as if the light were coming from within the coin instead of reflecting off its surface.  Of course the bronze has less relative relief than the silver and its reflectivity is nowhere close to the silver - it's a much darker object.  Nevertheless what relief it does have is hidden by the diffusion cylinder.  I didn't even bother including the shot of this bronze that used both the diffuser *and* the top reflection paper with the hole - it was really bad.  

With this cylinder setup I couldn't use your pyramidal paper reflection device at all - that's why I hit upon the paper with a hole in it sitting atop the cylinder.

Seems the evening out of light is very helpful for silver, and much less so for bronze.  More experiments to go, but this is the state of affairs so far.

PtolemAE

[Viriathus]

That's a very interesting experiment, I'd like to try it. Could you also explain how you illuminate the coin using the cylindrical diffuser? It's true that silver is difficult to photograph, but a bronze coin with a dark patina is definitely not easy. The two cases require very different set-ups, I think the bronze coin needs a stronger light. Silver acts almost as a mirror reflecting the light, unlike the dark bronze coin, so silver needs a softer light. The photo of the tetradrachm is great! Even though it doesn't look so shiny, your method brings out the detail very well (which is more important) and it completely illuminates the coin without shadows.

I have a roman sestertius which I would like to photograph using a completely different technique. It's called axial lighting. I've only tried it once with a silver coin, but I won't be able to do it now with my sestertius because I'm not home. This method is better for coins with less relief. If you want, you could give it a try... I'll add a diagram of it. You need a clear sheet of glass which has to be placed at an angle of 45 degrees to the camera lens and the light source. Much of the light will pass through it, but some of it will be reflected downward to the coin. You will also also need something to shield the coin from direct light.

Do you use a gray card? It provides a reference for white balance, so it could resolve the color problem of your coin.

I've applied the post-processing method I told you about to one of the photos of the bronze coin, I don't know if I've improved it or not... What do you think?

Good luck and keep me up to date with the results!

[PtolemAE]

That's a very interesting experiment, I'd like to try it. Could you also explain how you illuminate the coin using the cylindrical diffuser? It's true that silver is difficult to photograph, but a bronze coin with a dark patina is definitely not easy. The two cases require very different set-ups, I think the bronze coin needs a stronger light. Silver acts almost as a mirror reflecting the light, unlike the dark bronze coin, so silver needs a softer light. The photo of the tetradrachm is great! Even though it doesn't look so shiny, your method brings out the detail very well (which is more important) and it completely illuminates the coin without shadows.

I have a roman sestertius which I would like to photograph using a completely different technique. It's called axial lighting. I've only tried it once with a silver coin, but I won't be able to do it now with my sestertius because I'm not home. This method is better for coins with less relief. If you want, you could give it a try... I'll add a diagram of it. You need a clear sheet of glass which has to be placed at an angle of 45 degrees to the camera lens and the light source. Much of the light will pass through it, but some of it will be reflected downward to the coin. You will also also need something to shield the coin from direct light.

Do you use a gray card? It provides a reference for white balance, so it could resolve the color problem of your coin.

I've applied the post-processing method I told you about to one of the photos of the bronze coin, I don't know if I've improved it or not... What do you think?

Good luck and keep me up to date with the results!

I've seen and tried to use axial lighting setup and didn't make any progress - not enough reflection from the glass down to the coin and some of it got up into the camera (image of the lamp itself reflected up).  More experiments with that later.

I could add the gray card - for now I just use graphic program 'set white' to adjust color after photography if the color of the white background is a little 'off'.

The cylinder diffuser is just a piece of some kind of translucent white plastic (nylon? polystyrene? - doesn't look/feel like PVC)  pipe from the hardware store for $0.90 when looking for something more like your chopping board.  It is 3.25" inside diameter, 3.25" high, and 0.125" thick.  Seems to work.  Looks like it's some kind of sleeve part to join to slightly smaller pipes together - a rigid ring around the mid-point of the cylinder's height on the inside.  Two or three compact flourescent lamps close.  At the top of the cylinder, just resting on it (below camera, above coin) a sheet of white paper with a hole in it (about 1.25" diameter) so some already-diffused light inside the cylinder would bounce straight back down to the coin. 

There is also some light coming from below the coin up into the cylinder because I set the coin on a translucent plastic sheet about 1.5" standing above 'the ground' (white) so there will be no shadows - and the lamps can bounce some light up from that white 'ground'.

Anyway the whole thing needs yet more work.  The flat contrast-free detail that came out on the tetradrachm this way does show everything but the coin looks different - more like your photos, it's 'shiny' like any silver coin and this photo doesn't give that impression.

Rather get a good photo to start with than use photoshop to compensate by layering/mixing multiple images.  Not really having a problem with bronze coins - you can see many decent bronze coin photos on the gallery here and at ptolemybronze.com; all shot without going to all the trouble required for silver.

Not done yet ....

PtolemAE