Anderson Park

Hello All
Here  are photo's taken at Tarpon Springs Anderson Park, Florida. Their is a boardwalk that runs by the water so you
 can take pictures and not get eaten . The hopper is 3" long.

Did you really take those yourself?

Really Really artistic and amazing.

Wow.

Admin
I have been into shooting wildlife for over fifty years. Did my own film developing years ago making 16 x 20 prints working
out of my bathroom living in the housing projects back then.  My camera I use now a Olympus  OM-D E-M1 ll camera with a Olympus
40-150 2.8 telephoto lens. I copy the coins with the smaller camera with a Olympus 50mm1.2 Macro lens.

Very nice! I use an Olympus too although mine is the smaller EM-10. It’s a great bit of kit.

AVG wrote:Admin
I have been into shooting wildlife for over fifty years. Did my own film developing years ago making 16 x 20 prints working
out of my bathroom living in the housing projects back then.  My camera I use now a Olympus  OM-D E-M1 ll camera with a Olympus
40-150 2.8 telephoto lens. I copy the coins with the smaller camera with a Olympus 50mm1.2 Macro lens.

I need tips and suggestions for my silver pictures on my website. I think I highlight all the flaws I see. And some I never see in my hand.

ACE
I find it difficult some times to get a good photo of a coin with the direction of the light that hits the coin.
Some times i have to take many shots and still don't get it right . When you get it right you can really see
how great a coin is or bad.

AVG wrote:ACE
I find it difficult some times to get a good photo of a coin with the direction of the light that hits the coin.
Some times i have to take many shots and still don't get it right . When you get it right you can really see
how great a coin is or bad.

I am talking about my poured silvee pieces. I tried light boxes, natural light etc. It bugs the heck out if me. I know members have taken their own pictures when they arrived and they are FAR better than mine.

Ace
The only thing i would try a different camera and lens and see what you get.

AceBullion wrote:I need tips and suggestions for my silver pictures on my website.  I think I highlight all the flaws I see. And some I never see in my hand.

For poured silver, I think you want some background lighting with a key light that gives the lighting some direction.  i.e.  Not too flat and not too specular.  This is a setup I've used to coins like sovereigns with a satin finish (see below).  You can substitute a spot for the panel if you need more specular reflection, and maybe add another light.  Really, the key to getting decent photos is to frig about with the lighting.

And for poured silver, you don't need to do axial shots like I'm doing with the coin here.  The camera can also be a bit further away unless the item is really small.



Fortunately, the lights and tripods aren't terribly expensive, perhaps a couple of hundred quid, and you can get it off Amazon or other online retail sources.  Chances are that whatever camera you have will be fine if you can get a macro lens for it at a reasonable price.

I've got a Sony A6400, but any camera that you can get a reasonably priced macro lens for will be fine.  The A6400 is an APS-C format (the sensor is a bit smaller) and APS-C lenses tend to be a bit cheaper (my macro lens was about £180), although not usable on a full frame size camera.

I also pretty much exclusively use the camera with tethering software when I'm taking shots of coins. That connects the camera to the PC (you can see it in the background) and allows you to round trip photos into some basic cropping and post pretty quickly so it's easy to try things out.  The reason I got the Sony is that they play nicely with tethering software, and Sony actually offers a passably good tethering app called Imaging Edge for free off their website.

Silver
You are doing great, I like how your photo's look.
I am using a Olympus OMD E-M5 II with a Olympus 50mm 1.2 lens. Nothing fancy to copy a coin with white paper flat on a counter and the flu. light
that is mounted on the above cabinet, It does not work all the time so I have to try a ring light on a black background. I have three cameras two
Olympus, OM-D E-M1 II with a Olympus 40-150mm 2.8 which I use for birds and one Panasonic LUMIX with a Olympus 25mm 2.8 lens which I used on the firearm's
forum for many years. I have had many others years ago but these are the ones for the last 20 years. They are all old but work great for me.

AVG wrote:Silver
You are doing great, I like how your photo's look.
I am using a Olympus OMD E-M5 II with a Olympus 50mm 1.2 lens. Nothing fancy to copy a coin with white paper flat on a counter and the flu. light
that is mounted on the above cabinet, It does not work all the time so I have to try a ring light on a black background. I have three cameras two
Olympus, OM-D  E-M1 II with a Olympus 40-150mm 2.8 which I use for birds and one Panasonic LUMIX with a Olympus 25mm 2.8 lens which I used on the firearm's
forum for many years. I have had  many others  years ago but these are the ones for the last 20 years. They are all old but work great for me.

It's not all that hard to get decent pictures of coins.  A set up like the one above will be fine for getting axial shots of most coins, and you can use focus stacking if you want to do an oblique shot.  

Coins with shiny surfaces can be a little fiddly as you have to control what's getting reflected.  I've had some good results lately with a cone shaped diffuser.  This is just some tracing paper rolled into a cone shape with the bottom trimmed so it will sit flat, and a hole in the top to take the photos through.

Another one I've done recently is to make up a flat diffuser with a hole cut in it to point the lens through.  These are all arts-and-crafts level tech with cardboard, tape, PVA glue and tracing paper.  Some combination of flat and specular light will get the best results.  The Knights I put up the other day were done with that, plus a key light shining directly on the coin from the side.

I've also got an axial lighting box that holds a sheet of glass at 45 degrees.  You shine the light in from the side and take a picture with the camera pointing down through the glass.  These days I don't use it a lot, as it makes the coins look very flat.  It's good for picking out the detail on the surface, though.