Jarl
Hero Member
- Jul 28, 2012
- 822
- 738
- 🏆 Honorable Mentions:
- 1
- Detector(s) used
- CURRENT: E-Trac
FORMER:Minelab Explorer SE Pro, Garrett AT Pro & Garrett Pinpointer Pro Garrett GTAx 1000, Ace 250
HAVE USED: Teknetics & Bounty Hunters
WANT TO TRY: Tesoro and White's someday
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
In response to TN member, 'asmerri' I thought to explain a little on how I take my pics. On this bit, I'm going to focus on the coin pics. This may be old yarn for some of you and I am not explaining this as a professional, because I am not. I'm just a person that tries to get it right by trial and error and following the methods of many people well before me.
My equipment is simple: Canon EOS Rebel XS with stock 24-55mm lens. Generally I shoot in manual, auto focus and stabilize 'on'. Lens for close ups is usually set at 50mm...because any lower might look a little too skewed because you're getting into wide angle...everything starts to distort. Try not to make your coin shots look like you are shooting through a peep hole in an apartment door. I use an external flash hot shoe mount(Nissin SC-01) and an FT 1700 Promaster flash. The camera, lens and flash were purchased at Walmart years ago. The external hot shoe mount at a camera shop(around $45 at the time). But it allows you to control your flash angle for many effective and practical reasons.
The pics here are of a 1937 Merc that I found at a park last week. Yay me! Lol. Anyway, from top left-right to bottom:
Top left: Taken with built in 'pop-up' flash. Simple, fast...and if carefully done...good enough. It's a little glittery and blasted with highlights for my liking though. The 'average Joe' style of shot. Oops...some hairs found their way into the photo...sorry.
Top right: Taken with external flash with homemade soft box attached to flash. Flash was placed just above the coin. The shadows are soft, there is form in the image. The figure almost appears to be alive. Really though, I didn't make the soft box to take coin pics originally, it just got into my hand because I wanted more even illumination for my photos one day and liked the result.
Lower: Taken using 'reverse axial lighting'. I used the soft box/flash again, but this time placed the coin in a box that holds a piece of glass at a 45 degree angle over the subject(the coin in this instance). Do a Google search on this technique...it works great, but takes a little construction and trials. I think this is the preferred method of some professionals. My set up was very crude but worked good enough. What it does is this: the incidence lighting illuminates the subject from one angle(from the side in this case) and also hits the glass which is at 45 degrees between the camera and subject. The light is bounced down at the coin and then is reflected back at the camera through the glass. This captures the initial image of the coin but also eliminates the shadows...so what you get is a flatly frontally lighted image of your subject. Whew! Did you catch that?? Just look it up and try it. In my opinion, it is great for cataloging but not if you want to enjoy the 'beauty' and 'form' of the coin's artistry. I think the previous method does a better job at that.
If you want to spend the money to acquire the 'axial effect' more or less, then purchase a 'ring flash'. These can be expensive, but produce direct, flat and nearly shadowless light. Just look it up, you'll find tons of examples and different brands on the market.
There you have it...three methods or techniques. Feel free to ask me to explain anything you didn't understand or something that wasn't clear or left out.
Thanks for looking.
My equipment is simple: Canon EOS Rebel XS with stock 24-55mm lens. Generally I shoot in manual, auto focus and stabilize 'on'. Lens for close ups is usually set at 50mm...because any lower might look a little too skewed because you're getting into wide angle...everything starts to distort. Try not to make your coin shots look like you are shooting through a peep hole in an apartment door. I use an external flash hot shoe mount(Nissin SC-01) and an FT 1700 Promaster flash. The camera, lens and flash were purchased at Walmart years ago. The external hot shoe mount at a camera shop(around $45 at the time). But it allows you to control your flash angle for many effective and practical reasons.
The pics here are of a 1937 Merc that I found at a park last week. Yay me! Lol. Anyway, from top left-right to bottom:
Top left: Taken with built in 'pop-up' flash. Simple, fast...and if carefully done...good enough. It's a little glittery and blasted with highlights for my liking though. The 'average Joe' style of shot. Oops...some hairs found their way into the photo...sorry.
Top right: Taken with external flash with homemade soft box attached to flash. Flash was placed just above the coin. The shadows are soft, there is form in the image. The figure almost appears to be alive. Really though, I didn't make the soft box to take coin pics originally, it just got into my hand because I wanted more even illumination for my photos one day and liked the result.
Lower: Taken using 'reverse axial lighting'. I used the soft box/flash again, but this time placed the coin in a box that holds a piece of glass at a 45 degree angle over the subject(the coin in this instance). Do a Google search on this technique...it works great, but takes a little construction and trials. I think this is the preferred method of some professionals. My set up was very crude but worked good enough. What it does is this: the incidence lighting illuminates the subject from one angle(from the side in this case) and also hits the glass which is at 45 degrees between the camera and subject. The light is bounced down at the coin and then is reflected back at the camera through the glass. This captures the initial image of the coin but also eliminates the shadows...so what you get is a flatly frontally lighted image of your subject. Whew! Did you catch that?? Just look it up and try it. In my opinion, it is great for cataloging but not if you want to enjoy the 'beauty' and 'form' of the coin's artistry. I think the previous method does a better job at that.
If you want to spend the money to acquire the 'axial effect' more or less, then purchase a 'ring flash'. These can be expensive, but produce direct, flat and nearly shadowless light. Just look it up, you'll find tons of examples and different brands on the market.
There you have it...three methods or techniques. Feel free to ask me to explain anything you didn't understand or something that wasn't clear or left out.
Thanks for looking.
Amazon Forum Fav 👍
Attachments
Last edited:
