Tips on shooting a coin?

[John Kasaian]

I'm working on an article about coins which requires some illustrations for publication. Do you think there is any advantage to using LF over 120, 35mm or even digital considering the teenie weenie subject matter (the largest coin will be quarter sized---the smallest a dime?) and end use (a not-at-all-slick-magazine?)

Any thoughts on how the set up a shot? I'm thinking of using wax to hold the coin (s) to the inside of a plastic milk carton with one side of the carton cut away to shoot through so the coin will be bathed in a nice diffused light

Also, given the tone on tone nature of the subject --silver coins--what do you see as being the more dramatic presentation, B&W or color with color for the back ground or maybe even reflected off the coinage? Would it look too garish? Would B&W look to "clinical? I'm thinking I want to avoid a lot of contrast in order to make the bias relief on the coin "pop" but then maybe I should try APHS since it usually records incredible details. As you can tell I've never done this before---any advice (please?)

[Bruce Watson]

For this duty, I'd use the smallest format I could. For many coins, you'll be at 1:1 even with 35mm. Using 5x4, you'd be at 15x magnification which is rumored to be a serious PITA if you can even figure out how to get there at all.

35mm with a macro lens seems like a whole lot more fun. But as usual, YMMV.

[Patrik Roseen]

There are several ways to shoot a coin and especially wrt how the lighting is set up.
This is an often described subject in macro-photo books.

A diffused light will work but the coin might end-up looking flat. By having a stronger light come in from one side there will be shadows emphasizing the structure on the coin if this would be of interest.

After glancing through many macro-books, I tend to like color more than B&W. As you say, playing around with some colorful lighting in the background is pretty cool.

I saw a picture once of a 'car brake-disc' that was shot in a way that made it look as if it was rolling towards you, leaning slightly to the left. The disk was silver colored similar to a coin but the background was rather colorful with some shadows. The depth of field made parts of the disk blurry which created the feeling of it moving.

Good luck with this project!

EDIT: You can do a google images search for coins and see what comes up. Here is an example where the lighting came in from the top of the picture to emphasize the details. As can be seen this light is only a bit stronger than the rest of the lighting but the effect is quite nice. And a polarizer filter could also prove useful for removing any unnecessary flare.
Wedding Coin

[Jack Flesher]

If it were me, I'd scan them directly. On any halfway decent flatbed, a 1600 DPI scan will generate incredible detail it would be difficult to match with film.

Cheers,

[chris jordan]

What Jack said. Even cheap scanners make amazing "cameras" for those kinds of subjects.

[Frank Petronio]

learn how to make a drop shadow...

[Jack Flesher]

learn how to make a drop shadow...

Yep. And it's also quite easy to render any number of special lighting effects in PS assuming you have a good exposure to begin with.

[Frank Petronio]

Which is why all those million-dollar-a-year car photographers from Detroit suddenly found themselves out of work. Even Kodak uses rendered images (not photos) of their film boxes, at least back when they actually advertised something as quaint as "film."

[Patrik Roseen]

...a scanner and drop shadow in PS...so much for photography...I give up ;-)

[robc]

Which is why all those million-dollar-a-year car photographers from Detroit suddenly found themselves out of work. Even Kodak uses rendered images (not photos) of their film boxes, at least back when they actually advertised something as quaint as "film."

That'll be Michael Kenna out of work then...