Taking Picture of Coins – A Wonderful Art
The Scanning Technology are easier and faster, and helps us in taking the picture of flat surface such as coins, papers etc. without any more efforts. I had tried several times to take clear picture of coin using scanner but I don’t satisfied with the result produced by the scanning images. Although scanning coins are faster, it's probably the only reason why I would prefer a scanner instead of digital camera for taking coin pictures. Later I tried to use digital camera to take picture of the coins and I get what I really wanted!!
Pictures of the coins taken with Digital Camera show details of the coin much better than the scanned coins, Digital Camera covers the depth of the coins and presents actual picture as same as coin.
Image 1: Detail view of Coin Using Digital Camera
Taking coin pictures with digital camera
- Hopefully you'll find this 6-steps guide very useful for taking the picture of coins.
- Clean lens of the camera using optical cloth and make sure your coin is free of dust and dirt.
- Use macro mode or macro lens to take picture of coins and fix Digital camera with a tripod to avoid blur in photos.
- Avoid using internal flash light of the Camera, as it will reflect from the coin surface and you are not able to get a good picture of coin.
- Use LCD monitor when taking coin pictures, you will be able to preview depth of field
- Cross-lit the coin to bring out details
- Switch to aperture priority mode and select a small aperture such as f/8 (F8) this will increase depth of field and show details of the coin better.
- You will always be diverted towards scanning the coin instead of talking its direct picture using a digital camera. But a scanned image of coin doesn’t reveal all the details of coin as shown in Fig.2 below.
Image.2 Photo Image and the Scanned Image
Image 3: Front and Reverse View of the Franklin Half Dollar
After taking photo of coins, you need to do some editing work in Picasa or Adobe Photoshop Elements or any other editing tools to curve, to adjust levels, filter, effects, or to add background, and many more changes to make your coin’s picture best. Apply sharpening after the images are resized.
Digital camera is a better choice for taking coin pictures, especially for coins with remaining mint luster.
